


Burdens of a Timeline Traveler

by Lord_Tenebros



Category: Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Combined with one other ending that won't be revealed yet, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, FAIL narrator is a deity who's also a jackass, Fix-It fic in an unusual way, Henry didn't abandon Ellie for selfish reasons, Henry has experienced ALL the timelines, Henry is a decent guy with no good choices, Henry knows a LOT more than anybody would expect him to, Henry surrenders to Ellie and ends the war before it can begin, Multiverse, No beta we die like Reginald because Valiant Hero DIDN'T HAPPEN, Toppat Civil Warfare Ending | TCW (Henry Stickmin), Toppat Leader Ellie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Tenebros/pseuds/Lord_Tenebros
Summary: Ellie has overthrown Henry Stickmin's leadership of the Toppat Clan, claiming the tile of Toppat Leader for herself and claiming revenge against him for cruelly abandoning her at the Wall after she tried to help him. She didn't know what Henry would do with the few loyalists who escaped the airship with him, but the last thing she expected was for Henry to not only surrender himself to her mercy, but also deliver to her the precious Tunisian Diamond. All he asks in return is for Ellie to listen to his reasons for leaving her at the Wall, to let him explain himself in full before she claims her revenge. With nothing to lose and so much to gain, Ellie decides to humor him and hear him out. But what Henry reveals is a story beyond anything she can possibly imagine...and completely flip her understanding and beliefs about the thief upside-down.
Relationships: Ellie Rose & Henry Stickmin, Henry Stickmin/Ellie Rose
Comments: 144
Kudos: 770





	1. Surrender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, hasn’t it? I’ve recently gotten into the Henry Stickmin games, and I really love Completing the Mission, especially the dynamic between Henry, Charles, and Ellie. I think I’m one of the very few people who prefers Henry x Ellie over Henry x Charles, but I know I’m in the minority here lol.
> 
> Anyways, this fic is a bit of a weird one that I came up with, and it includes theories such as Henry being aware of or even travelling through multiple timelines and the guy who comes up with the FAIL messages actually existing as a deity or entity of some kind. It could also arguably qualify as a Fix-It Fic for the “Toppat Civil Warfare” ending, except I don’t think anybody else has come up with a way to fix that ending the way that I’m about to. There will be a lot, A LOT of spoilers, so don't read this fic unless you've finished most if not all of the Henry Stickmin games.

_Toppat Airship_

Ellie glowered at Sven as he put his cell phone down. “Well?” she asked impatiently. “Did you find them?”

Sven shook his head. “We found the escape pod that Stickmin and his Toppat traitors used, but it was completely empty when our search party got there,” he answered. Before Ellie could ask for more details, the Swedish Toppat agent sighed sadly. “And the escape pod…it…it landed on Reginald and Right Hand Man. Crushed them so hard there’s no way we can bring back either of them as cyborgs this time around. They’re dead. Dead and gone.”

Gasps arose from the rest of the Toppats as Ellie bowed her head. Though she had only met Reginald briefly, she was still grateful to him for supporting her when she had denounced Henry in front of the rest of the clan for abandoning her at the Wall. “What do we do now?” she wondered. “Is there a rule for who becomes the Toppat Clan Leader next?”

“Technically, I was third in line after Reginald and Righty,” Sven admitted. A few of the Clan members sent hostile looks at him, he quickly added, “but I don’t want to be the Leader! There’s so much work that has to be done, especially with that big project Reginald was working on, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin!” He looked around animatedly. “If anybody else wants to be the Leader,” he insisted, “you’re more than welcome to it!”

“Hold on a sec,” one of the Toppats interrupted. “Didn’t Ellie technically overthrow the old boss? Doesn’t that mean she’s now the new Leader by right of conquest? Especially since Reggie and Righty are gone. I think she should be the new leader of the clan!”

Ellie’s eyes widened. “Wait, wha…”

“Yeah!” another Toppat eagerly agreed. “The way she took down that backstabber Henry was hardcore! And Reggie seemed to like her. I think she’d make a great leader for the Clan!”

Soon, the Toppats started chanting. “Ellie! Ellie! Ellie!”

Ellie stared at the Toppats chanting her name as Sven approached her with a smile. “Well congratulations, Miss Rose,” he offered. “It seems you’re the new leader of the Toppat Clan!”

“Uh…” Ellie shook her head to collect her thoughts. “Thank you, I guess?” she muttered. Her eyes hardened and a determined look appeared on her face. “I may not be Reginald or Right Hand Man, but I’ll do what I can to lead the Toppat Clan to greatness!” she promised.

A resounding cheer echoed throughout the airship control room as Ellie turned to face Sven. “All right, Sven, since you’re the one who was the most in charge before I showed up, I guess you’re my Right Hand for now. Is there anything big we have planned right now? What was that project you mentioned earlier that Reginald was working on?” she requested.

Sven thought for a moment. “It was a space station,” he answered. “A weaponized space station that would allow us to raid any place on Earth with ease. From what I last heard, it was close to being done, though we’re still about a month or two away from it being fully completed.”

Ellie nodded. “Okay. As much as I want to go after Stickmin, we have no idea where he went off to or what he’s planning. We’ll strike the moment he shows his sorry face,” she declared, resisting the urge to growl at the thought of Henry. “In the meantime, I’m not going to waste any thoughts on him. Set course to the space station launch site, Sven. I want to see that rocket you’re talking about…”

_One Month Later_

Ellie carefully observed the space station from the top of the control tower with her binoculars, her pink top hat laying neatly on her head, complete with a golden chain. Even now, the idea of the Toppat Space Station still impressed her greatly, and she had ordered the Toppats to keep all raiding activity to a minimum to prevent them from being discovered by the Government or anyone else that could threaten the launch.

“Miss Rose!” a Toppat member rushed into the control room from the elevator. “We just received a transmission!”

Ellie turned her attention away from the space station and towards her subordinate. “Just a transmission?” she asked skeptically. “What’s so important about a single transmission?”

“It’s not a transmission from inside our communication network!” the Toppat frantically explained. “Nobody is supposed to be able to communicate with us from outside!”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. Someone outside of the Toppat Clan was trying to contact them, and more importantly, they knew where they were? This couldn’t be ignored. “I’ll handle this myself,” she decided. The Toppat Clan nodded and left the room, his message delivered. Ellie turned to the control panel and pressed a button. A large TV screen raised itself up from a slot in the floor, flickering to life as the transmission went through. The screen buzzed through static for a few seconds and cleared, revealing…

“Stickmin…” Ellie snarled.

“Hello, Ellie…” Henry greeted her. There was the faintest of smiles on his face, though it didn’t reach his eyes. She could see the guilt and regret on this face, as well as something else. Something that she couldn’t define.

“You don’t get to call me that,” Ellie cut him off, deciding not to think about it too much before she somehow did the impossible and started sympathizing with him. “Only people I _trust_ can call me that. You lost that right the moment you left me behind at the Wall!”

Behind her, the elevator doors slid open and both Sven Svennson and Burt Curtis barged in. “Hey, uh, Boss Lady?” Burt intoned, his voice fairly emotionless despite the importance of the situation. “We, uh…we just saw who was sending the transmission. It’s…”

“Yes,” Ellie cut him off. “I know _exactly_ who it is.”

“We can’t trace the signal,” Sven added grimly. “Wherever they’re sending their transmission from, they’ve hidden their location so well that we don’t have any idea where they could possibly be!”

Ellie shot a glare at Henry’s face on the TV. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Hiding like the coward you are?”

“I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d get blown up by the Clan before we even got a chance to talk,” Henry replied evenly, his voice betraying nothing. “But I’m not here to taunt you. I’m here to make you an offer.”

Ellie scoffed, and behind her both Burt and Sven snickered. “What offer?” she demanded mockingly. “I have the entirety off the Toppat Clan, with all of our resources and manpower behind me. And what do you have? Two former members who are somehow sticking by your side for God knows why and a prisoner? You’re outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched. And you really think you’re in a position to make a _deal_ with me?”

Henry shook his head. “I’m not talking about a deal like that, El…Miss Rose,” he replied calmly. He stopped, taking a deep breath in and out, and continued. “I’d like to surrender to you and the Toppat Clan…under certain conditions.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “Surrender, huh?” she repeated, unable to resist putting a smirk on her face. “Now we’re getting somewhere, but you still don’t have any leverage over me to be making conditions, Stickmin.”

To everyone’s surprise, Henry only countered with a small smile of his own. “I have…one thing that might interest you,” the former Toppat king replied smoothly. He moved to the side, and the three Toppats’ eyes bulged when they saw what Henry had been hiding behind them, even Burt’s.

“The Tunisian Diamond!” Ellie gasped, staring at the jewel with incomprehension.

“Ummm…isn’t that, uh, one of the three most valuable jewels in the entire world, or something?” Burt asked.

“We were going to launch a raid on the museum where it was located,” Sven shook his head in disbelief, just as shocked as his fellow Toppats. “But when we scouted it, it was already gone. You’re telling us that YOU’RE the one who stole it?”

Despite everything, Henry couldn’t resist a small smirk. “I’ve been a thief long before I joined the Toppats, you know.” He moved back in front of the diamond, covering it from their view. “I’m not going to pretend I’m in a good position. But I don’t have _nothing_ to bargain with.”

Ellie, Sven, and Burt looked at each other, thinking. The Tunisian Diamond would easily be one of the greatest treasures that they could possibly claim, for the same reason that stealing the Romanian Ruby had been widely regarded as one of the Toppat Clan’s greatest victories in recent times. Ellie turned back to the TV screen, looking warily at Henry. “You said you were going to surrender. What does the Tunisian Diamond have to do with that?”

Henry’s smile faded and he sighed. “Just this,” he answered. “I’ll surrender myself to you, and I’ll give you the Tunisian Diamond as well. No cheats, no tricks. You’ll have me, and you’ll have the Diamond…on two conditions.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “And what would those be, assuming I decided to accept?” she asked.

“The first is that you accept Thomas Chestershire and Geoffrey Plumb back into the Toppat Clan,” Henry explained. “You give them a full pardon for siding with me, and you don’t punish them at all.”

Ellie was more than a little surprised. For a backstabber who was so willing to leave behind someone who had helped him just a few seconds ago, Henry’s request was surprisingly selflessness. She turned to Burt and Sven. “What do we know about Thomas and Geoffrey?” she asked. “Is there anything about them to suggest why we _shouldn’t_ accept them back?”

Sven and Burt talked to each other for several seconds, then turned back to their leader. “Honestly?” Sven finally reported. “Thomas has always been one of our more effective raiders, and he is a bold and active recruit. And Geoffrey, despite his appearance, is a decent brainstormer, and a skilled fighter in close combat especially with nun-chucks. Neither of them has ever significantly failed the Clan in any way, and while neither of them would ever be considered in a position for leadership, they did serve the Clan well throughout many years.”

“And has any of them ever done anything to suggest they would betray the Clan?” Ellie questioned.

Burt shook his head. “Hmmm…uhm not before they sided with Stickmin, I don’t think.”

Ellie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Hmmm…not the worst condition, I suppose,” she grudgingly conceded. “And what’s the other condition?” she demanded.

Henry took a deep breath. “That you allow me to explain myself,” he answered. “That you let me fully explain the reasons why I left you behind at the Wall. You don’t kill me or interrupt me in any way. Then, when I finally finish,” he sighed, “I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”

“That’s it?” Ellie asked incredulously. When Henry nodded, she narrowed her eyes. “This is easy. _Too_ easy. How do I know this isn’t a trap of some kind? For all I know, this is all a lie just so you can get an easy shot at me and get leadership of the Clan back.”

Henry smiled wryly. “Because if I really wanted revenge, Miss Rose, I would have just sent the Government after you,” he countered. Before any of them could comment, Henry pressed on. “I know _exactly_ where you guys are and where the Toppat Secret Launch Base is. I know that it’s hidden deep in the jungle, defended by its own SAM Turret out in front. I know that there’s a train track leading to the station that goes under a mountain and is set up in most of the desert riding alongside a river deep below a canyon at one point. I even know that the three support beams are its weakest point right now, and that shooting them could cause the whole thing to collapse and explode. If I really wanted to see the Toppat Clan fall, I could have gone to the Government, pretended that my joining the Toppats was extreme deep cover so that I could find as much of their plans as possible, and spill the beans on your location and your weaknesses. And I would have done it a month ago when your space station was nowhere near ready to launch.”

The three Toppat leaders stared at each other in thunderstruck, horrified disbelief. “HOW does he know about all this?” Ellie demanded furiously. “Did Henry read all our plans before I overthrew him? What the hell is going on?”

Sven shrugged helplessly. “Don’t look at us!” he protested. “Reginald and Right Hand Man kept most of those plans to themselves, even when Stickmin was the leader. And even if they shared them, I have no idea how he knows so much about our base in this kind of extreme detail!”

“Yeah, this is bad…” Burt mumbled, “pretty bad. Stickmin knows this much about our space station already. And, uh…we don’t have any clue what else he knows.”

Forced to confront the fact that her old enemy really did have some form of leverage on her after all, the red-headed Toppat Leader turned back to Henry. “So…” she gritted her teeth, “if we accept your surrender, you give us the Tunisian Diamond, and let me have justice for leaving me behind at the Wall.”

Henry nodded.

“And in exchange,” Ellie continued, glowering. “we welcome Thomas and Geoffrey back into the Clan with a full pardon. And I let you share your side of the story, your reasons for leaving me behind.”

“That’s all I want,” Henry confirmed.

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “No tricks,” she warned. “Nothing funny. You keep everything you told us to yourself. And if I even _think_ that you’re trying something, I’ll shoot you on sight, your explanation be damned. Do I make myself clear, Stickmin?”

Henry nodded solemnly. “You don’t have anything to worry about from me, Miss Rose,” he promised. “This is a true surrender.”

“Since you seem to know your way around our base so well, I want you to drive up to the front gate with your two friends in nothing larger than a simple car,” Ellie instructed. “I don’t want to even see a gun on any of you. I’ll have some operatives wait for you at the gate to accept your surrender. You have ten hours.” Her eyes narrowed. “ _Don’t_ waste my time.”

Henry nodded. “I’ll be there. I’ll even give you a warning: there’s a good chance the Government may attack your base soon,” he warned. “I don’t have anything to do with it, but I’m sure they’ll have spies in your area. I’d be ready for an attack if I were you.” And with that, Henry cut the connection, the TV screen dissolving into static.

“So, umm, Boss Lady? Do you, uh, think he’s telling the truth about a possible Government attack?” Burt finally broke the silence after several seconds.

Ellie reluctantly nodded. “If Stickmin wanted to backstab us, he wouldn’t have told us anything,” she grudgingly answered. It doesn’t make sense for him to warn us about one if he just tipped off the Government. And like he said, if he wanted to set the Government on us, he would’ve done it a month ago. He certainly has enough information on us…somehow.”

“Should we accept his surrender? We could always just shoot them at the gate and take the Tunisian Diamond for ourselves,” Sven suggested.

To everyone’s surprise, including her own, Ellie shook her head. “No. We’ll accept them. So long as Henry fulfills his end of the bargain, we’ll do the same for ours.” She might have planned to just shoot Henry on sight without even giving him a chance to explain himself back on the airship, but she had been caught up with her emotions in the heat of the moment. Now, though she still hated Henry, her emotions had cooled down significantly and she could think more rationally. “I’m not going to break an agreement, especially when it’s one where we already have all the advantages. I’m not going to lower myself to _his_ level,” she swore.

“Assuming there’s no trap, that is…” Burt muttered.

“And there’s another thing that worries me,” Ellie admitted. “ _How_ does Stickmin know so much? He somehow has all this intelligence on our base, former Toppat King or not, and he might have just as much on the Space Station itself. We may have a MAJOR security breach on our hands, and we need to interrogate Stickmin anyway just to make sure we can plug this leak.”

“Do we need to delay the launch, then?” Sven asked.

Ellie briefly pondered the question. “Delay it until tomorrow,” she ordered, “and prepare for a Government attack just in case. Stickmin might be right or wrong about it, but I’m not going to take a chance when we’re so close to launch.”

“Right away,” Sven and Burt both saluted. Sven turned towards the intercom to distribute orders, while Burt left the tower via the elevator to give more detailed instructions to the rest of the Toppats. Neither of them noticed the troubled expression on Ellie’s face.

Though she hated to admit it to herself, and absolutely wouldn’t admit it to any of the other Toppats…she was genuinely curious to know why Stickmin had abandoned her at the Wall. She had run the moment when she had overthrown his rule of the Toppat Clan, and…something wasn’t right. Henry’s facial expressions when she’d revealed herself and exposed him had been what would have been expected: shock, panic. But those emotions and his movements had seemed…faked, forced. His eyes, on the other hand, they had been filled only with resignation, acceptance, and regret. As though he had deeply regretted leaving her behind at the Wall… _and had seen all of this coming,_

Something was very off with Henry Stickmin, and Ellie was determined to find out what. She owed it to herself, so that she could find some closure over why he had so cruelly betrayed her in one of the worst prisons on Earth after she had helped him escape.

“All right, Henry Stickmin…” Ellie murmured. “Let’s hear what you have to say. Whatever you say when you surrender will decide how merciful I am when you finish…so choose your words wisely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s the end of the first chapter. As you can already tell, Henry knows far more than he should about the Toppat Clan’s spaceship and their plans. You might’ve already figured out the reason…though nobody in-universe could possibly imagine what Henry has been through.
> 
> You might have noticed that Ellie is being very harsh and aggressive towards Henry. Keep in mind, though, this is starting with the Toppat Civil Warfare ending. As far as Ellie knows, Henry betrayed her trust and stabbed her in the back by abandoning her at the Wall for seemingly no good reason. She has every right to be furious and hateful towards him, for without the whole story how is she supposed to know any better? Her attitude will change once Henry confesses…but right now there’s no reason for the bad blood to disappear.
> 
> What did you guys think? Did I have a good start? Or should I just give up now? Let me know what you guys think!


	2. In the Presence of the Boss Lady

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Wow, this fic is really off to an amazing start! I didn’t expect NEARLY as much support as you guys actually gave me! I hope I can continue to deliver the high-quality writing and storytelling that all of you expect from the initial reception!

_The Road to the Toppat Launch Base, the Jungle_

Deep in the jungle, a small car drove down a dirt road surrounded by countless trees as far as the eye could see. A regular, unassuming sedan that contained a priceless, valuable treasure in its trunk, and three men who were slowly approaching what could very well be their doom.

“Are you sure about this, boss?” Geoffrey Plumb asked, his gruff voice unable to hide his concern.

“I am,” Henry nodded his head without hesitation. “I couldn’t run from this even if I wanted to.”

“I still can’t believe what you told us,” Thomas Chestershire shook his head incredulously. “If you hadn’t described everything you’ve been through in such stunning detail, I would have thought you’d gone crazy and that Ellie was right to overthrow you as leader.”

“She _was_ right to overthrow me though,” Henry answered quietly. “Even if she doesn’t know why I did it, it doesn’t change the fact that I stabbed her in the back and left her behind at the worst prison in the world.”

Thomas sighed. He had been shocked to learn that Ellie had in fact been telling the truth when she accused Henry of betraying her, but after learning about the former Toppat King’s reasons for doing so and everything he had experienced, those revelations had only strengthened his conviction that Henry was a worthy leader. And he knew that Geoffrey’s reaction was very much the same.

“I hope this works out for you, boss,” Geoffrey mumbled. Though Ellie had accepted the terms of their surrender, all three of them knew full well that they were completely, laughably outnumbered and outclassed if Ellie decided that she’d rather just kill them all. But Henry seemed confident that she would honor the terms of their deal, and the two Toppats trusted his judgment. “We can’t hope to handle the Clan the way we are even if we did want to start a real fight.”

“Speaking of fight…” Thomas looked around the forest. “I thought you mentioned that last time the Toppat Space Station was about to lift off, there was a huge battle with the Government when they tried to invade.”

“There was,” Henry confirmed. “Maybe the timing is off? I never saw what happened when Ellie took over the Toppat Clan last time. I wanted to reset the timeline as quickly as possible and pretend it never happened.”

“Can’t blame you for that,” Geoffrey muttered.

“The Space Station is getting closer,” Thomas warned. The top of the rocket ship easily towered over the trees, and it was approaching closer and closer with every second they passed. “Are you ready, boss?”

Henry nodded. “I’ve been thinking about how to explain all this to Ellie ever since I surrendered,” he answered solemnly. “Hopefully she’ll be convinced by the end of it all…”

_Meanwhile, at the Toppat Launch Base_

Ellie stood at the peak of the control tower, her eyes fixed on the road leading to the Toppat Launch Base. The deadline that she had given Stickmin was quickly approaching; they had only 1 hour left before she lost her patience…and they lost any chance of mercy.

“I see them!” Sven shouted, pointing down at the lone road that led to the base.

Ellie’s focused her attention on what he was looking at. Though it was a little difficult to see with the road so far away, the single car driving down the road towards them was unmistakable. “Looks like Stickmin’s sticking to our agreement…so far.”

“Uhm…Miss Boss Lady?” another Toppat asked hesitantly. Ellie turned her attention towards him, man wearing a white top hat with a perpetually blank expression on his face that contrasted sharply with the fear he was feeling inside. “I was thinking…uhm…well, I…I was thinking…”

“Spit it out, Pablo!” Ellie ordered impatiently.

“IthinkStickminmightbetoovaluableforustokill!” Pablo Sleuth blabbered.

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “Say that again?” she demanded.

“I…I think Stickmin m-might be t-too valuable for us to j-just kill!” the Toppat’s top detective repeated himself, stammering. Ellie stared incredulously and the other Toppats slowly backed away, while Pablo wondered if he had just signed his own death warrant with his words.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Ellie exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “I’m not going to shoot you just for making a suggestion. But if you want me to take what you say seriously, you better have a good reason for saying it!”

Pablo relaxed significantly now that the imminent threat of death had passed, but he still clearly looked nervous. “Well…it was only because Hen…errr, Stickmin,” he quickly amended, catching Ellie’s glare, “warned us about a possible Government attack that we saw it coming. If he hadn’t told us about it, there’s no way we wouldn’t have been so prepared to deal with it.”

Ellie didn’t say anything for several seconds. As much as she hated to admit it, the undeniable truth was that Stickmin’s warning _had_ been essential in preparing them for the Government’s attack. Even if the advice had been given by Stickmin, there was absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t follow it, so Ellie had ordered the Toppats to maximize their security in preparation for a potential Government attack. When one _did_ come earlier in the day, their position had been so thoroughly fortified that the Government had aborted the attack entirely. With how well-defended the base had been, it _was_ possible for the Government to succeed in destroying the station, but it would have almost certainly wiped out most if not all of their forces, and General Galeforce had apparently decided that the sheer loss of life was not worth a risky invasion that had no guarantee of succeeding.

Part of Ellie sneered at the general’s inaction, but another part respected his restraint. The man clearly cared for his troops and wasn’t a fool, characteristics that Ellie could at least grudgingly give him credit for.

“I get your point,” she finally admitted, snapping back to reality. “To be honest, as much as Stickmin pisses me off, he does seem to know a hell of a lot more than he should. And I want to know just _how_ much he knows. That’s one of the reasons why, so long as he and his two buddies don’t try anything stupid, we’ll accept his terms of surrender.”

Sven chuckled. “Not much to lose, especially when we’ll get the Tunisian Diamond out of it.”

The other Toppats laughed at their incredible and easy victory, though Ellie didn’t join in. “So long as Stickmin doesn’t cause us any problems, I don’t want any of you to start beating him up or having a little fun with him,” she warned, her fiery gaze daring anyone to challenge her. “Stickmin is mine to deal with. _I_ was the one he stabbed in the back. If anyone deserves first blood on him, it’s _me_. And if _any_ of you takes that away from me…” her voice lowered into a snarl, “I’ll give you _plenty_ reasons to regret that mistake.”

The Toppats shuddered at the danger in her voice, making it clear what would happen to anybody who got any dumb ideas. “Pass this information to everyone,” Ellie ordered. “I want everyone to know what I’ve said. And arrange a…welcoming party…at the front gate.” Her lips stretched into a smile that was utterly devoid of warmth. “I think it’s time we finally meet up with our old friends, don’t you think?”

_Toppat Launch Base, Front Gate_

Henry squinted in front of him. “Are those…Toppats in front of us?” he asked, slowing the car down.

Thomas nodded, having clearer vision of the view in front of him thanks to his dual monocles. “I believe so. In fact, I’m almost certain that they’re waving their guns at us and ordering us to stop.”

“Setting up a roadblock,” Geoffrey observed. As he spoke, the three notice that the SAM turret that was in front of the rocket was trained straight on them, its missiles ready to blow them up to kingdom come at any moment. The exiled Toppat couldn’t help but nod approvingly. “Far away from the actual station so that if we decided to suicide ram the car into the rocket and try to blow up the rocket with a giant explosion, that missile would blow us up before we could even get the chance. This new Boss Lady knows what she’s doing.”

Henry smiled wistfully. “She always did,” he murmured as he stopped the car in front of the group of armed Toppats. He raised his hands up in front of him and gestured for Thomas and Geoffrey to do the same.

One of the Toppats approached the car, holding up his custom-made rifle threateningly. He was wearing a dark-green top hat with a crimson band, and Henry immediately recognized him as Mr. Macbeth. “Get out of the car _slowly_ , Stickmin,” the former driver threatened. “Any sudden moves, and I’ll fill you with bullets!”

Henry nodded and slowly opened the car door, with Thomas and Geoffrey doing the same. The three men got out of the car, their hands in the air and empty of any weapons. “Do you want us to open the trunk to get out the Tunisian Diamond?” Henry asked.

Mr. Macbeth’s eyes narrowed. “Slowly,” he repeated warningly. Henry nodded and slowly reached down to open the trunk. The trunk of the car popped open and Mr. Macbeth gestured towards two of his fellows. “Search the trunk,” the Toppat elite ordered. The two Toppats nodded and walked over to the back of the trunk, while the others kept their guns trained on the Henry, Thomas, and Geoffrey. The Toppats reached inside and picked up the sparkling blue Tunisian Diamond, the gem’s brilliant radiance momentarily stunning the Clan members.

“It’s real,” one of the Toppats confirmed after finishing an inspection, both to confirm that it was real and to make sure there were no hidden traps. “There’s no mistaking it.”

Mr. Macbeth smirked. “It looks like you know how to follow directions, Stickmin. Good for you, cause I don’t even want to think about what the Boss Lady would’ve done to you if you were stupid enough to try and screw us over.” He gestured towards the rest of the Toppats. “Let’s take them up to the rocket. The Boss Lady is waiting.”

Two of the Toppats grabbed Henry roughly by the arms, although to his mild surprise they didn’t start to outright beat him. The Toppats placed handcuffs on Henry, Thomas, and Geoffrey, before half-carrying-half-dragging the group over to the front gate, with Thomas, Geoffrey, and the rest of the Toppats following behind. Seeing the little party arrive, Kayn opened the gate to allow them to pass.

“How’s it going, Kayn?” Henry asked as they passed the gate.

“Hey,” Kayn replied nonchalantly as they passed. After a few seconds, he jolted. “Wait, how did he know my…?”

Mr. Macbeth and his fellow Toppats marched Henry and his loyalists to the base of the ramp leading up to the rocket, where three small camouflage jeeps were waiting for them with more Toppats. The Toppat elite roughly shoved Henry into the backseat of the jeeps and his fellow Toppats did the same to Geoffrey and Thomas with the others. Nobody said anything on the way up to the entrance of the rocket, and as they approached Henry could see more Toppats pointing guns at them just in case Henry attempted to hijack the jeep.

“Ellie really isn’t taking any chances with me, is she?” Henry mused to himself. He approved of the redheaded woman’s caution…even if it was completely unwarranted. Even if he had some treacherous intentions, trying to do it on a moving vehicle when it could easily veer off and cause everyone to fall to their deaths (and in the face of a firing squad, no less) was an incredibly stupid idea.

As they approached the entrance to the rocket, Henry realized that there was one person standing just behind the firing line, standing taller than the rest. Even from a relatively far distance, there was no mistaking the head of fiery red hair and the pink top hat that nestled neatly on top of it. A few seconds later, and Henry could clearly see Ellie standing proudly behind her soldiers, her arms folded across her chest as she glowered down at him. The jeep slowed to a stop a short distance away from the loading bay and Mr. Macbeth got out of the car, making a signal with his hand. The other Toppats who had ridden with him grabbed Henry and pulled him up towards Ellie. The Toppats roughly shoved Henry to the ground, forcing him on his knees as Ellie slowly walked towards him, a smirk on her face as she privately reveled in seeing her betrayer on his knees in front of her.

“Well, well, well…” Ellie greeted him mockingly. “How the mighty have fallen, Stickmin. From Leader of the Toppat Clan, to nothing more than my prisoner.” Some of the other Toppats started laughing. “How does it feel, knowing that you’re at the mercy of someone you stabbed in the back?”

Henry sighed. “I’m getting exactly what I deserve,” he replied solemnly. “And like I promised you, the Tunisian Diamond is yours to keep.”

As if on cue, Mr. Macbeth reached into the trunk of the jeep and took out the Tunisian Diamond, its dazzling brilliance catching the awe of everyone around them. Even Ellie was stunned by the beauty of the gem, matched only by the Romanian Ruby that the Toppats had stolen before she had joined them. Shaking her head to collect her thoughts, she gestured towards a female Toppat. “Take the Tunisian Diamond down to…”

“…the vault near the Orion Lounge,” Henry finished for her. “Make sure you don’t press Eject or you’ll end up shooting the Diamond out of the rocket,” he warned.

Everyone stared at him in blank shock. Strangely, only Thomas and Geoffrey didn’t seem completely stupefied, although even they were surprised by their leader’s words. “All right, HOW?” Ellie shouted, stomping over to Henry until she was inches away from his face. “How the HELL do you know about things like this? That name wasn’t even something we came up with until a few days before you showed up!”

“It’ll all make sense when I explain why I left you behind at the Wall,” Henry promised.

“ARRRGGHH!” Ellie shouted with incoherent fury. She whirled around and smashed her fist into Henry’s stomach. The thief collapsed onto the ground, his face contorted with pain as he struggled to breathe and recover from her rage-filled blow. Realizing that her conduct was unbecoming of a Toppat Clan Leader, Ellie stopped and took several deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down. She gave Henry a venomous glare. “Your explanation better be _fantastic_ ,” she hissed, “or I’ll make you beg for death by the time I’m done with you!”

“I…don’t doubt it…” Henry muttered, catching his breath as he got back up on his feet.

Ellie was about to give some orders to her Toppats, when she noticed something else. “Wait a minute…” her eyes narrowed. “I just realized something. There was a fourth person in your little group, wasn’t there? Where is he?”

“That would be Dave Panpa,” Henry confirmed. “He wasn’t really a Toppat Clan member, more of a prisoner. We let him go a while back.”

“WHAT?” Ellie exclaimed. “And why did you do that?” she growled.

Henry met her furious gaze calmly. “Because Dave didn’t deserve to get caught up in this mess,” he answered without hesitation. “He’s been through a lot of shit, some of it being my fault. He deserved a break for once.”

“You do realize,” Ellie replied with forced calm, “that he could have spilled the beans on everything we’ve been doing?”

Henry shook his head. “We haven’t told Dave anything important,” he reassured her. “He doesn’t even know that the Toppats have a Space Station, or that we have the Tunisian Diamond. We left Dave in a small town where he could get help getting back home from the local authorities, but even if he went straight to the Government there isn’t a single useful thing he could tell them.”

Before Ellie could retort, Henry pressed on. “And let me remind you that we never mentioned anything about Dave in our agreement,” he reminded her. “You never said anything about him. So long as I didn’t do anything to stab you guys in the back or give away Toppat secrets, what I choose to with Dave is my business.”

“…Fine,” Ellie conceded grudgingly. “I’ll let that one slide.”

“Were you all about to ask us to do something, boss?” another Toppat asked, this one a woman with black hair wearing a plain black top hat. Henry recognized her as Carol Cross, one of the elites of the Toppat Clan and a very serious individual.

“Yeah,” Ellie answered. She pointed a finger at Henry. “Take him down to the interrogation room. It’s about time for us to have our little _chat_.”

Mr. Macbeth and Ahnoldt Schwarz walked over to Henry, grabbing his arms and forcing him onto his feet. Normally, they would have ordered some grunts to escort a prisoner, but Henry was a special case. The thief and former Toppat King was arguably one of the highest-profile prisoners to ever be captured by the Clan for several reasons, and they did _not_ want to take any chances if Henry tried to be…uncooperative.

There was a reason why “If you want something done right, you do it yourself” was a thing, after all.

“Uhh…what about them?” Burt pointed towards Thomas and Geoffrey.

“So far, Henry’s stuck to his end of the bargain,” Ellie replied curtly. “As long as they don’t cause any problems, they’re back in the Clan. Though keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t try anything funny.”

“Got it,” Sven nodded his acknowledgment. As he turned to greet the two formerly exiled Toppats, Mr. Macbeth and Ahnoldt pulled Henry away from the loading bay, with Ellie following close behind.

“So…” Henry spoke after a few minutes of silence, “how’d you get that rifle to shoot lasers and bullets at the same time?” he asked Mr. Macbeth.

The Toppat elite nearly dropped Henry’s arm in shock. “H-how do you know about my secret rifle’s capabilities?” he exclaimed.

“There’s a lot of things Stickmin knows about for some goddamn reason,” Ellie interrupted. “And don’t you worry, Macbeth. I’ll be getting some damn answers from him, one way or another.”

Mr. Macbeth nodded, reassured by his leader’s promise, as he and Ahnoldt continued to carry Henry over to the interrogation room, a large and empty room with a single table and two chairs which was right next to the brig’s cell rooms. As they shoved Henry into a seat, the room began to rumble as the rocket began its launch sequence.

“Leave,” Ellie ordered Mr. Macbeth and Ahnoldt.

The two Toppat elites looked at their leader skeptically. “Dah-are you sure?” Ahnoldt asked, concerned.

“You sure you don’t want us hanging around as backup?” Mr. Macbeth added. “What if he tries something?”

A menacing glint appeared in Ellie’s eyes. “I hope that he does,” she hissed. “I hope that he’s stupid enough to try, so that I can vent all my rage and hate on him and make him pay for his betrayal up close and personal. Besides, even if he does somehow beat me in a fight, he’s on a rocket that’s launching into space, surrounded by enemies. He wouldn’t last ten seconds.”

“We’ll be waiting outside, then,” Mr. Macbeth informed her, to which Ellie gave him a curt nod. Ahnoldt and Mr. Macbeth left the interrogation room, keeping a close eye through the large glass window as Ellie sat down on the other chair.

“All right, Stickmin,” Ellie stared straight into Henry’s eyes. “Before we begin, I want to ask you some questions about how the hell you seem to know so much. Depending on how much you cooperate, and how helpful you are, I might, _might_ , let you live.” At the surprised look on Henry’s face, the redheaded woman scowled. “Don’t get me wrong, I _despise_ you, and part of me still hopes that you’ll do something stupid so that I can slaughter your sorry ass.” She took a deep breath to calm herself down. “But I have to think about what’s good for the Clan, and with the amount and kind of knowledge you have, you might be valuable enough to keep alive. You sure as hell won’t ever be more than a prisoner, but your stay here might be more…comfortable…than I was planning, _if_ you’re useful enough.”

Henry nodded solemnly. “Ask away,” he replied, still wincing as he remembered the impact of Ellie’s punch in his stomach. At least she’d calmed down enough to the point that she was thinking rationally.

“What else do you know?” Ellie cut straight to the point. “What else about the spaceship, or whatever?”

Henry didn’t even need to think before answering. “You’ll want to be careful about the defenses around the core,” he warned. “I don’t know how sturdy the outer walls of the station are, but if somebody decides to crash their ship directly into the core, that’s enough to critically damage it and cause the whole station to violently explode.”

Ellie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. She could easily imagine a small army of Government space stations rising from Earth to try and invade the station, and if just one of those ships was bold enough to kamikaze right into the core… “Hmm…I’ll have to talk to some of our engineers about that,” she murmured. Focusing her gaze right back on Henry, the thief could have sworn that her glare was just the _tiniest_ bit less harsh than it had been seconds earlier. “Anything else?”

“The Supreme Dominance laser,” Henry answered. “It can be reflected back against the Station itself by things like the Tunisian Diamond.”

Ellie scowled. “I knew that that laser was too good to be true,” she muttered.

“I’ve got one more thing I can think of off the top of my head,” Henry offered. When Ellie motioned for him to continue, he continued. “You really need to improve the durability of those windows. The way they are right now they can be destroyed by sonic weaponry. Or my yells at full power,” he added mentally.

“Okay...” Ellie made a mental note to confront these issues later. “Now then, here’s my next question. How the hell do you know about all these things?” she demanded. “There is no way in Hell that you could possibly know about things like the Space Station’s weaknesses, Mr. Macbeth’s special gun, or the location of our secret vault.” She glared straight into Henry’s eyes. “What’s your damn secret, Stickmin? It’s almost like you’ve seen all of this before. Something that shouldn’t be possible, and yet…”

Henry sighed. The time had come, the time for his big secret to revealed. He had known that the chances of Ellie believing his revelation were already slim, and without evidence practically nonexistent. Because of this, he had been dropping hints ever since he had first surrendered to Ellie, so that when she finally demanded an explanation from him, she would at least have to accept the fact that he had a significant degree of almost prophetic foresight and knowledge that was far beyond what Henry should have known under the normal constraints of reality.

“Like I told you before, Miss Rose, it’s tied to the reason why I left you behind at the wall. But before I tell you, let me ask you a question first,” Henry replied after several seconds of thought. Ellie was tempted to lash out at him, her mood not helped by the reminder of the betrayal. But something told her that the question Stickmin was about to ask was very important, and so she decided to let him speak.

Henry looked straight into Ellie’s eyes, his gaze intense and with an expression that was downright unfathomable. “How much do you believe in things like magic and the supernatural?” he asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Here it comes. Henry’s about to reveal his big secret to Ellie. And he’s been dropping several hints that only strengthen the notion that he knows far, far more than should be possible.
> 
> Back when I was writing my first draft of this chapter, the only Toppat I really mentioned by name was Sven. But then I did some more research and looked up the names of the Toppat elites in the Luxury Escape Pod, such as Mr. Macbeth and Carol Cross, and I think the chapter is much stronger for it. Mr. Macbeth's the guy with the green top hat who was the conductor of the train and also the guy you had to fight in the Undertale reference. Yeah, THAT guy.
> 
> I dunno if it’s just me projecting what I would have done in Ellie’s shoes, but I like to imagine that Ellie is a pragmatic sort. Sure, she absolutely hates Henry for betraying her at the Wall, but she’s not going to ignore the fact that Henry has this huge impossible knowledge base for some mysterious reason, and that his knowledge could be very useful for the good of the Toppat Clan. And since the Toppat Clan acts like a family, she’s not going to shoot or abuse other members just for making valid suggestions that she doesn’t like on a personal level. She’s the Leader of the Toppat Clan, and she didn’t earn the respect of elites such as Mr. Macbeth, Sven, or Carol Cross by being a dick to her subordinates or acting irrationally. At the same time, she’s already gotten screwed over once by Henry, an she is not taking any chances with him this time around. Of course, Henry doesn’t have any ill will towards her whatsoever (quite the opposite, actually), but she doesn’t know that.
> 
> Anyways, that’s all for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!


	3. The Secrets of Henry Stickmin, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey guys! I have a hospital rotation and another fanfic I’m working on at the same time as this, so weekly updates won’t be a thing from this point forward. Just wanted to get that established before we begin.
> 
> Anyways, let’s not waste any more time. On to the chapter!

Ellie blinked, completely taken aback by the seemingly random nature of the question. “Repeat that?” she demanded.

“How much do you believe in things like magic and the supernatural?” Henry repeated.

Ellie stared at Henry incredulously. Her first instinct was to laugh. Her second was to start pummeling Henry with her fists again for insulting her intelligence, consequences and agreement be damned. Taking a deep breath, Ellie calmed herself and searched Henry’s face carefully, looking for any sign of mockery or amusement.

There wasn’t any. The former Toppat King’s face was 100% serious in his question, and Ellie wasn’t sure what to think of that. Especially because she had proof that magic, or at the very least superhuman powers, existed. Her own force powers, abilities that would have been right at home with the Jedi and Sith in _Star Wars_ , a closely guarded secret that only her family knew about. Of course, she hadn’t even told the other Toppat Clan members about them, and she sure as hell wasn’t gonna tell Stickmin.

“I don’t...disbelieve in them, necessarily,” Ellie answered carefully. An honest answer that also told Stickmin nothing important about herself.

Henry sighed. “There’s no real way for me to gently break into this topic, so I’m just going to say it. The reason why I seem to know so many things that makes absolutely no sense for me to know?” He stared straight into Ellie’s eyes. “It’s because I’ve seen it all personally, and know what will happen from experience. I warned you about a likely Government attack because the Government attacked almost every time when the Toppat Space Station was set to lift off, and I even knew that the support beams were the weakest points because when the Government destroyed them, it caused the whole rocket to fall, topple over, and explode.”

Ellie was too shocked by Henry’s explanation to even say anything. Henry, meanwhile, still wasn’t finished. “I saw a Government spaceship, piloted by someone who in another time and place was my closest friend, crash his ship into the side of the Space Station, critically damaging the core and causing the whole thing to explode. I know about the Orion Lounge and its location next to the station’s Vault because I once stole the Norwegian Emerald from there, and I later used it to reflect the Supreme Dominance laser back on the Station itself and slice it to pieces. And I once faced off Mr. Macbeth in a train cart containing all of the Toppat Clan’s gold, where he used his special rifle to try and either fill me with bullets or wipe me out with the gun’s laser.” Henry looked over towards the interrogation room’s window, where he knew Mr. Macbeth was watching the whole conversation. “You’re going to want to find a way to not have your laser gun reflected by mirrors, by the way,” he called out. “Cause I used a mirror to reflect your gun’s laser back at you and turned you into a pile of ash.”

Ellie shook her head in disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense!” she shouted, slamming the table in frustration. “How could you have done all these things, and learn all of this? There’s no way you could have done all of this. It’s impossible!”

And yet, as insane as Henry’s explanation was...all of the advice Stickmin had given them was valid, sound advice. Protect the Space Station’s Core from a direct, battering ram-esque assault? Ellie could absolutely visualize a Government ship ramming straight into the side of the station out of desperation or some foolish sense of bravery, a comparatively small sacrifice that would be well worth the destruction of the Toppat Clan’s crowning achievement. The Supreme Dominance laser’s weakness to reflective surfaces? A potentially fatal weakness that she would absolutely be investigating, regardless of whether that advice was given by Stickmin or no. And Stickmin’s advice had already paid off hugely already: if it hadn’t been for his warning, the Clan wouldn’t have been nearly as prepared for their attack as they had been, and the jungle could have broken out into a huge and potentially disastrous firefight. Especially since Stickmin made it clear that he could have easily told the Government about their weaknesses and ruined them long before they were ready for lift-off.

Once or twice could have been a coincidence or a lucky streak of insanity, but this many? No…Henry Stickmin was no madman. Especially since she had the feeling that they were only scratching the surface of what he knew.

“Let’s pretend that I believe you completely,” Ellie declared, her voice dripping with irony that made it clear that she did nothing of the sort. Though she would never admit it, she was now genuinely curious to hear Stickmin’s story. “How exactly did you achieve the impossible feat of doing all these different things at once? Especially since it sounds like you’ve worked with the Toppats AND the Government at the same time, which is clearly impossible.”

Henry took a deep breath and nodded. “It all started about a year and a half ago,” he explained. “Back then, I was just a simple thief, and all I had wanted to do at the time was rob a bank in the middle of the desert. The problem was, the Bank was heavily fortified, and I had some options on how to try and break in. Even back then, I knew that I had only one chance to get in. But before I could make my decision… **He** came.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. She still didn’t have any faith in Stickmin’s words, but she had to concede that his story was…quite fascinating. She didn’t see any harm in listening for now. After all, she was the leader of an infamous thieving clan who had just claimed dominance over space itself. She had all the time in the world. “Who?” she demanded.

Henry’s face darkened, and even Ellie was shocked the sheer intensity of the roiling emotions in his face. “The One who would set the course for the rest of my life,” he answered grimly. “Trusting him gave me an opportunity beyond anything I could have ever hoped for…and at the same time, it was the worst mistake I ever made.”

_One and a Half Years Ago, Breaking the Bank_

Henry took out the gear that he had brought with him to the bank, looking at the imposing stone wall uncertainly. A shovel, explosives, a teleporter, a laser, a wrecking ball, and a bag of money to disguise himself with. The newly fledged thief thought carefully, trying to figure out what was the best way to break into the bank and steal the riches within. After several seconds, he decided to use the shovel. He was about to reach into his pockets (enhanced to hold a frankly absurd amount of things thanks to Gadget Gabe), and was about to take out the shovel, when a voice suddenly interrupted him.

**“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”**

Henry abruptly stopped moving. “Wh…what?” he looked around, trying to find the origin of the voice. But there was nobody in sight, and the open, empty desert certainly wouldn’t offer any place to hide.

**“You won’t be able to see me, but I assure you, I’m here.”**

While he was still trying to puzzle out where the voice was coming from, Henry suddenly noticed something else. The wind had stopped blowing, the nearby cactus and tumbleweed seemingly frozen in midair. It was as if time itself had stopped.

“Who are you?” Henry asked in confusion. “ _Where_ are you?”

 **“I’m all around you, and I’ve been watching you for a very long time, Henry Stickmin,”** the voice answered. Henry instantly grew tense as he realized that whoever this person was, they somehow knew their name. **“You can call me…The Entity, for now.”**

“The…Entity,” Henry repeated slowly. Though he was still confused, he decided to follow along for now. “Why did you stop me from picking up the shovel?”

 **“Because…”** the Entity answered smoothly. **“If you choose to use that shovel, you will fail. Don’t believe me? Why don’t you use it right now, and dig down underneath the Bank?”**

Henry was incredibly skeptical, but did as the voice suggested. Taking out his shovel, he began to dig deep in the ground underneath the Bank. He shoveled for several minutes, when suddenly he felt his tool hit something hard and metal. “What?” the thief asked confused as a strange hissing noise began to echo around him. He took out a match and lit it, bringing it closer to the ground. The small fire revealed a metal pipe with the words GAS MAIN written on it.

A pipe that he had just busted open with his shovel.

Henry’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief. “OH FUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!” he barely had time to scream before the world around him exploded in fire, and his vision instantly turned black. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself staring at the Bank from a distant third-person perspective, where he could see the giant hole he had dug…and the column of black smoke and flames billowing out of it. The entire scene turned pale, and the word FAIL appeared in front of him.

 **“Never dig straight down,”** the Entity’s voice returned, chuckling at Henry’s explosive failure.

“What the hell?” Henry shouted angrily. “You knew that was going to happen. Why didn’t you stop me?”

 **“What are you yelling at me for?”** the Entity retorted, his voice dripping with amusement. **“I outright told you that you would fail if you used the shovel. And not only that, but I’ve saved your life as well.”**

“Wait, what?” Henry barely had time to react when there was a flash of light, and he suddenly found himself back in front of the Bank wall, before he had done anything to try and break in the Bank. “What just happened?” he asked, looking around wildly.

 **“I’ve reset time back to before you made your little mistake,”** the Entity answered. **“And now that you’ve seen what I can do, it’s time for me to make you a little offer.”**

“Go on…” Henry prompted. He still didn’t fully comprehend what had just happened, but he was already _very_ interested in what he was seeing.

 **“I can see the potential in you, Henry Stickmin. Your life is, to put it mildly, _very_ interesting. The paths that your future can take are defined by important choices and options that you will have to make,” **the Entity explained. **“And it would be so utterly _disappointing_ if that life were to be cut short because of one wrong decision. So here is my offer to you, Henry Stickmin. Whenever you fail to reach your goals, and let me assure you here and now that many of those fails _will_ involve deaths, I will reset time and allow you to try again until you succeed.”**

Henry blinked as his mind processed the offer and all the possibilities. “That sounds really good,” his eyes narrowed. “ _Too_ good. What’s the catch? With how much you’re offering me there’s no way there isn’t a catch of some kind.”

The Entity’s next words sounded positively delighted. **“I see that you’re no fool. Good. I’d have greatly overestimated you if you simply took me at your word. To put it simply, Stickmin, your failures will be just as entertaining as your successes, and whenever you fail, I WILL mock you and offer my own dry commentary on your mishaps. I freely admit that you are essentially my toy, and while I have every intention of taking care of you and ensuring that you reach the end successfully, I will make no secret of the fact that I will take a great deal of amusement indeed from seeing you fall and break.”**

Henry scowled, but didn’t challenge the voice. While being a cosmic entity’s personal plaything was not something he was very appreciative about, it didn’t change the fact that he was still gaining a hell of a lot out of the deal. And he didn’t want to anger the deity into doing something else, such as guaranteeing that he would fail every time or just flat-out killing him. “And that’s it?” he pressed.

 **“There are other conditions that I will require you to meet in due time,”** the Entity answered cryptically. **“But they are nothing that you need to be concerned with for the time being. For now, however…do we have a deal, Henry Stickmin?”**

Henry furrowed his brow in deep thought. He knew all about the stories about dealing with the devil and all the ways it could bite him. But to be honest, he had little choice. He was running out of money, and stealing from the Bank would be the best way for him to get that money he desperately needed back. And while he didn’t like the fact that the Entity considered him a plaything and wasn’t making any effort to hide it, he would have trusted the being much less if he pretended to be a friend who “only wanted to help.”

Besides, if even a few of the “fails” he could experience were as violent and as deadly as the one he had just been through, being able to rewind the clock would be a _very_ useful skill to have indeed.

“I accept,” Henry declared, making the decision that would define his future more than he could possibly imagine.

 **“Excellent!”** the Entity declared. **“Now, then…you already know were one path will lead. But what are you going to do now?”**

_Present Day_

Ellie stared at Henry as he finished the first part of his tale. “So you’re telling me…” she began, her voice laden with skepticism and disbelief, “that you made a deal with some sort of god that can rewind time, and that you can keep retrying whatever you’re trying to do until you succeed?:”

Despite the situation he was in, Henry couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle, even though it was devoid of any humor. “I was just a lowlife, average thief back then,” he answered dryly. “Do you really think some nobody like me would have been able to bust myself out of a high-security prison _or_ steal the Tunisian Diamond from a heavily guarded museum with just my own _criminal genius_?” He spoke the last two words with dripping irony. “That mayor guy who joined the Toppats, Frederickson…he couldn’t pull it off, and he was in a much better position to steal that Diamond than I ever was. Heck, doesn’t the fact that a lone thief was able to steal the Diamond long before you guys could ring any alarm bells at all?”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. She was definitely going to be having a little talk with Gene Frederickson later on. As for how Stickmin’s early thieving career…she had read as much about him as she could, to know her enemy as thoroughly as possible. The stories she had read had been…frankly unbelievable. Stickmin had busted himself out of West Mesa Penitentiary, one of the most heavily guarded prisons in the country, by avoiding an entire volley of bullets, outright _grabbing_ one of them and throwing it back at the prison captain, terrifying the entire guard into letting him simply walk out and drive away on a stolen prison car. And as for the Tunisian Diamond, Stickmin’s escape had been so stealthy, so flawless in its execution, that to this day the police still had absolutely no idea who had stolen it away from the museum in the first place. In fact, after reading the tales about Stickmin’s exploits, Ellie had honestly been surprised and disappointed with how easy it had been to supplant him as Toppat Clan Leader.

Was it really all because Stickmin _had_ failed, over and over again, until he had found the right path to success? Was THAT the reason why Stickmin had been so resigned and unsurprised by her overthrow, as though he knew everything that was going to happen already? It sounded so absurd, and yet…

She needed to know more.

Hiding the slight uncertainty that was beginning to form, Ellie pointed a finger at Henry. “Keep talking,” she demanded threateningly.

“Do you know about my escape from West Mesa Penitentiary and my theft of the Tunisian Diamond?” Henry asked.

“Obviously I know about the second,” Ellie scoffed, “and I did know about the first already. I’ve done my research on you, Stickmin. But if this…Entity, or whatever the hell you’re calling him…was helping you out, then how the fuck did you still get caught in the bank and tossed into prison?”

“At first, I thought the Entity stabbed me in the back when I snuck into the bank in my money bag disguise only to be arrested and thrown into prison,” Henry explained. “But the Entity promised that this was just the first of many crazy things that would happen in my life. And he _did_ keep his word. Yeah, I got shot, killed, or injured many times whenever I failed, and I had to deal with some snide comment from the Entity every time I fucked up, but I never would have escaped the prison or stolen the Tunisian Diamond if it wasn’t for his help.”

“This all seems awfully convenient,” Ellie commented, her eyes narrowed. “Even if we assume that I believe you to begin with, I still don’t see how this relates to the fact that you left me behind at the Wall after I helped you get out. You’re a good storyteller, Stickmin, I’ll give you that. And you might be more useful to me alive than dead. But so far you haven’t told me anything that will convince me to NOT leave you behind in one of the brig cells to rot.”

“I’ll get to the reason soon,” Henry promised.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for you to begin with, Stickmin,” Ellie growled as she gestured for Henry to continue. “This better be worth it.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “You said the Entity mentioned _other conditions._ What were those?” she questioned.

After all, if she was going to play along with Henry’s unbelievable story, she might as well get some entertainment value out of it.

“When I was escaping from prison and stealing the diamond, the Entity never brought those conditions up,” Henry explained. “There were a couple of different ways I could have gone about it, I guess, but once I figured out what I wanted to do, that was that.” The thief took a deep breath and sighed. “But that all changed once the Government kidnapped me to infiltrate the Toppat Clan’s Airship…”

_Nine Months Ago, Government Command Helicopter_

Henry frowned as he surveyed the Toppat Clan airship from a distance, trying to decide which method would be the best way to approach the mission given to him by the Government. Considering that Galeforce was willing to forgive him for stealing the _Tunisian Diamond_ of all things, he knew that this was going easily going to be one of the most difficult decisions yet.

**“Ah ah ah, Henry, let’s not get ahead of ourselves…”**

The same sensation that Henry had felt before, when time had stopped around him, suddenly returned. The wind had ceased, the warmth of the sun vanished, everything around him had slowed into a pale haze.

“What’s going on?” Henry asked, incredulously. “I haven’t even started yet!”

 **“There’s just one _minor_ detail we need to address first, before I send you on your way,” **the Entity calmly interrupted, though the tone in his voice made it clear that what they were about to discuss was anything _but_ minor. **“Do you remember, when we first met, that I mentioned that there would be other conditions that you would have to fulfill as part of our bargain?”**

Henry started developing a sinking feeling in his stomach. “…you’re about to bring those up now, aren’t you?”

The Entity chuckled. **“It appears we’re on the same page! How convenient for me. You see Henry, when I told you that your life and future would be defined by important choices, I wasn’t kidding,”** the Entity explained. **“Up until now, your life has mostly been in a straight line. Sure, you could have freed yourself from that prison or robbed the diamond in different ways, but the end goal would have been the same. _Now_ , however, the decisions you make will have _very_ significant consequences, consequences that will divert the path of your fate in dramatically different directions. Before, I did not really care how you succeeded in your endeavors. But now…I am going to introduce a new rule to our deal.”**

Henry gulped. “What do you want me to do?” he asked nervously.

 **“Simple,”** Henry could hear the satisfaction oozing from the being’s voice. **“If you wish for your life to proceed…you must complete _all_ of the four routes that I have foreseen in your future. Only then will I allow you to move on to the next stage of your life.”**

“…which one will be the real one?” Henry dared to ask.

The Entity sounded positively delighted. **“You’ll have to wait and see!”** he proclaimed. **“I can’t spoil the best part, after all…heh heh heh heh heh.”**

_Present Day_

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that you could have done something different in the Airship?”

Henry nodded. “In this timeline, I ditched the Government and accepted Reginald’s surrender of the Toppat Airship, becoming the Toppat Clan Leader,” he explained. “But that wasn’t the only thing I could’ve done. I could have turned Reginald over to the Government instead of sticking with the Toppats, winning a pardon for myself and earning a reputation as a bounty hunter, allied to the Government but not directly a part of it. I could have also snuck into the airship and stolen some top-secret incriminating evidence from the Clan, getting Reginald, Right Hand Man, and many other Toppats arrested by the Government. Or, I could have just broken out on my own, not allying with either the Government or the Toppats, instead deciding to steal the Toppats’ most prized possession: the Romanian Ruby. Some of those tasks were harder than others, but the Entity still kept his promise. No matter how many times I failed…I made it through in the end.”

By now, the pieces were beginning to click into place within Ellie’s mind. “Was leaving me behind at the Wall one of those timelines?” she asked quietly.

Henry nodded. “You wanted to know why I left you behind, and we’ve finally gotten to that point.” He looked straight into Ellie’s eyes, and the redheaded Toppat Clan Lady was taken aback by his gaze. It wasn’t the gaze of a coward, of a weak and evil traitor who was trying to hide away or excuse his sins. It was the intense gaze of a man who had nothing to hide, and who was ready to reveal his darkest secrets without fear.

“I never wanted to leave you behind at the Wall, Ellie,” Henry insisted, his voice and his eyes filled with both pleading and sincerity. Ellie was too surprised by the honesty she could sense in his expressions to call him out on the fact that he had addressed her by his first name. “And back when I thought I actually had a choice… **I didn’t.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Henry’s finally started to unload his secrets to Ellie. And here we finally address the reason why Henry was able to reset his many failures and succeed in doing some frankly incredible and borderline impossible feats. He made a deal with an Entity who is the being behind the FAIL screens, and he thought that the price would be the worth the benefits.
> 
> He should have known better than to think that things were going to be that easy.
> 
> Ellie still doesn’t really believe in Henry’s story…at least, not yet. She’s mainly listening to Henry for the sake of entertainment value that his story provides…but even now, her doubts about what she thought she knew about Henry are starting to creep in…and Henry has yet to drop the biggest bombshells.  
> Hope you guys enjoyed!


	4. The Secrets of Henry Stickmin, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I see you guys come up with a whole bunch of theories, and I’m pleased to see that nobody has guessed what I really have planned…at least, not entirely. There’s been quite a few assumptions that have been made in the comments, none of which have hit the mark yet. For now, we’re going to take a look at one of Henry’s favorite timelines from his perspective, and how Ellie reacts to it.
> 
> Dr. Skeletor: That was actually a REALLY interesting mini-story you came up with, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. That being said, I’m going a very different direction with this fic. Especially since my version of Henry doesn’t have any ill feeling towards Ellie whatsoever, and really doesn’t want to threaten her in any way.
> 
> Also, let me address this right now: I have a very busy real life schedule. I’m a med student who goes on rotations during the week, some of which can take up more than half of my time awake. Not only that, but I also have another fanfic that I’ve been working on for FAR longer than this one that takes just as much time if not more. There’s only so much I can do at any given time, so I’m sorry if fanfic chapters don’t come quickly. Thank you very much for defending me on this, ToppatKing.

Chapter 4 – The Secrets of Henry Stickmin, Part 2

“You…didn’t leave me,” Ellie repeated carefully.

“I didn’t,” Henry affirmed. “In another time and place, when I thought I had a choice on what I could do, I chose to take you with me.”

Ellie mouth tightened. “And yet here we are,” she snapped. “So you better get to explaining, Stickmin, before I decide that you’re just wasting my time.”

Henry nodded. “All right. Just like there were four different paths I could have taken for how I infiltrated the Toppat Clan’s airship, there were five different ways that I could have escaped the prison,” he explained. “But, I only really got to know you in two of them. The first timeline, the one that I _wanted_ to happen, was the one in which I took you with me and we escaped the Wall together. The second one, which is what _actually_ happened in this timeline, is the one where I abandoned you and escaped the Wall undetected.”

Ellie gritted her teeth at the reminder of Henry’s betrayal and forced herself to take a deep breath to calm down. “And what about the other three?” she growled.

“We didn’t really interact in any of those,” Henry answered. “The first one, I decided to go full balls-to-the-wall and just bust my way out. It actually worked, though only barely, and I had to fake my death in the end to pull it off. As for the last two, I called for the Government and the Toppat Clan to bust me out, depending on what I did back at the airship.” His eyes hardened and a shadow crossed his face when he mentioned the Toppat Clan, a subtle change of expression that Ellie still picked up on. Still, it didn’t seem to be relevant to the timelines involving her, so she wasn’t as interested in them.

“And let me guess,” Ellie hypothesized. “The Entity made you go for all five of them before he’d let you move on?”

Henry sighed. “Unfortunately. The Entity told me that, just like with the airship, how I did my escape from the Wall would dramatically affect what would happen in the final and most important part of my life that was coming up, so I didn’t really have any choice but to go through all of them.”

As he gave his answer, Ellie decided to test Henry with her next question. A seasoned thief and criminal herself, she had plenty of experience dealing with liars, and she was confident that she’d be able to tell if Henry was bullshitting her. “The timeline where we escaped together,” she asked, keeping her expression carefully neutral. “What happened?”

Henry’s face broke into a fond, _genuine_ smile. “It was easily my favorite path out of the ones we took together,” he answered earnestly, his eyes glazing slightly as he thought back to his and Ellie’s escape. “We climbed out through the vent on top of our room, into a small room outside one of the prison hallways. There were two guards blocking the way out.” To Ellie’s surprise, Henry chuckled. “I have to say, that part had one of my favorite fails.”

“One of your favorite…fails?” Ellie asked, nonplussed.

Henry couldn’t resist a snicker. “I tried to dance to distract the guards,” he explained. “My plan was that you’d attack the guards while I was distracting them with my dance.” He grinned. “But you ended up dancing with all three of us instead.”

He got up from his chair, and Ellie immediately turned his gun on him. Henry quickly raised his arms in surrender. “I’m not trying anything,” he promised. “I just want to show you the dance.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “The cuffs are going back on the moment you’re done,” she warned. “You try anything funny, and you’re dead.” She slowly approached Henry and undid the cuffs, her eyes and gun trained on the thief all the while.

The cuffs fell to the floor and Henry began to swing his arms and legs around, clapping his hands together every fourth beat. Ellie stared at Henry as he danced, seemingly without a care in the world. As much as she hated to admit it, the dance itself was catchy and fun, and it was only her fury at Stickmin’s betrayal that gave her the willpower to keep focus and not join it. But there was something else that bothered her. Even though it didn’t make any sense, the dance that he was doing looked bizarrely familiar…

Almost as though she’d somehow seen it before…

Before Ellie could think about it any further, Henry ended his dance and sat back down on the table. Ellie snapped back to attention, locking Henry’s arms back into the handcuffs. “Anyways, that’s not how we got out of that mess,” Henry continued his story. “We worked together to take the guards out at the same time, attacking them from behind so that they couldn’t do anything to stop us or help each other. Then we made it to the other side of the hallway, where the exit was blocked off by another door that I had to open with a switch from the other side.”

Henry looked straight into Ellie’s eyes. “The only way I could get to that switch was through the roof. And you helped me, Ellie. You helped me by lifting me up onto that roof with your force powers.”

Ellie stared at Henry in disbelief. He knew. He knew about her force powers, her special abilities that she had kept a hidden secret to herself. Not even the other Toppat Clan members knew about her force powers. And yet this random thief, who she had declared as her bitter and hated enemy, somehow knew about her preciously kept secret. “What the hell?” she shouted. “How do you know that about me? There’s no way I’ve told anybody about that, least of all someone like _you_.” She pointed her gun at Henry’s head. “Don’t bullshit me, Stickmin!” she snarled. “How did you know?”

Henry sighed. “It’s exactly like I’ve said,” he insisted. “Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

Ellie shook her head. She had already begun to question everything she thought she knew, and Henry’s knowledge about her force powers was the biggest bombshell yet. “What happened after?” she questioned, deciding to dwell on this later. But she couldn’t treat Henry’s story as simply an entertaining fantasy without dismissing the possibility of it being a reality. Not anymore.

“We almost made it out, but we got stopped by three guards,” Henry answered. A sheepish look appeared on his face. “Back then, I was honestly a pretty crappy shot. You had to tase me with an electric shock, and I just happened to randomly shoot all three guards while I was being zapped.”

Ellie scowled. “If you were trying to convince me that you aren’t just bullshitting me, Stickmin, spewing out insane crap like that isn’t helping your case.”

Henry shrugged. “You wanted the truth, El…Miss Rose. I’m giving it to you, as crazy as it sounds. Anyways, after we got rid of the guards, we had to get outside using the main elevator of the Wall. Only problem was, there was two guards already in there. You threw a cap to lure the guards out to capture some other prisoners while we snuck in and made it outside. And what we found…” he shook his head in disbelief. “Wow.”

“What?” Ellie pressed, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Henry smirked. “It was an absolute shitshow,” he answered. “All of the convicts had broken out of the Wall, and it was a mass free-for-all battle between the guards and the prisoners. While we were taking in all of the chaos, Grigori grabbed you and tried to drag you back into the Wall.” His eyes glazed as he recalled the memory, then burned with clear determination. “I wasn’t going to leave you behind, but every time I tried to straight-up fight Grigori ended up in a FAIL.” His face broke into a grin. “So I made a funny face instead.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “That actually worked?” she asked incredulously.

Henry’s grin widened. “He didn’t see the huge truck ram right into him.”

Ellie couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing, her eyes glinting with sadistic mirth as she fondly visualized one of her would-be tormentors in the Wall getting whammed with a truck. A fate that was as undignified as it was vicious.

Henry’s smile faded and a vicious look appeared in his eyes. “I _hate_ Dmitri and Grigori,” he growled, and Ellie was shocked to hear the sheer loathing in his voice. “They claim to be enforcers of the law, but I’ve seen what’s inside the Wall. The prison conditions are some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and they don’t have any problems with attacking and murdering people from another Government. Hell, in the timelines where I joined with the Government or got a pardon from them, they arrested me anyway and didn’t give a damn about the fact that my record was clean. They’re just as much criminals as we are,” Henry finished with a snarl. “The only difference is that we’re _honest_ about it. At least to ourselves, if not to anybody outside.”

Ellie found herself nodding in agreement. Whatever her thoughts about Henry and his actions, she was absolutely on the same page with him on his hatred of the Wall’s Warden. Perhaps once she had solidified the Toppat Clan’s position in space and established their superiority up there, she could turn her thoughts to revenge on Dmitri for his cruelty. “What happened afterwards?” she asked, deciding to file away her second vendetta for later.

“We had a little breathing room, so I tried to look around the absolute mess of a battle to try and find a way out,” Henry explained. “There was a hole in the fence but that led us off the cliff, so that was out. We tried to climb in the back of a truck with a bunch of other convicts, but there wasn’t actually anyone in the truck, so that was a FAIL. Turns out, what we needed to do was grab a motorcycle close to one of the walls. We almost made it,” Henry’s face darkened. “But then Dmitri grabbed me.”

The thief chuckled humorlessly before Ellie could say anything. “When Dmitri grabbed me, you drove away on the motorcycle. It’s funny…cause I thought you were going to do the exact same thing to me that I did to you. Dmitri started to rant some shit about how I fucked up his prison for the first time in 50 years and how he was going to get his revenge…and then you did something truly unbelievable.”

Ellie looked at Henry’s eyes and was stunned to find that he was looking at her with open admiration and awe. “What did I do?” she asked, wanting to know what she could have possibly done to earn such respect from her supposed enemy.

Henry grinned. “You picked up a stop sign, drove back, and slammed Dmitri in the face with it, knocking him out cold.” Ellie’s jaw dropped as she tried to picture herself doing such a thing, unable to hide her smirk at the Warden’s defeat and humiliation. “And together, we drove that motorcycle over the wall, finally getting the hell out of there.” He took a breath and sighed, a happy expression on his face as he thought back to those fond memories. “Out of all the timelines and ways I got out of the complex, that one was easily one of my favorites.”

Ellie studied her captive silently, trying to collect her thoughts. If she was honest with herself…she honestly didn’t know what to think. It should have been laughably easy to brush off Henry’s story as a load of nonsense. All this talk of alternate timelines and them breaking out of the Complex…it shouldn’t have mattered. She knew what had truly gone down, how Henry had abandoned her at the Wall and left her to fend for herself. Henry should have been easy to dismiss as a liar or a madman and punished accordingly.

And yet…something deep within Ellie told her that neither of those explanations made sense. The way Henry told his story didn’t seem like he was making up random garbage. He did not hesitate even slightly in telling his story and she could see the raw emotion in his expressions. Not just how real they were, but how intense. Despite the impossibility of it all, her gut feeling was telling her that Henry was telling her the truth and was emotionally tied very closely to his story.

As for Henry having gone insane…if that was the case, then it would be possible for Henry to genuinely believe his crazy story about an alternate timeline…except for the fact that he didn’t appear insane in the slightest. And even without that, all the advice he had given to her had been logical, sensible, and valuable. Once could have been a coincidence, twice could have been luck, but multiple times? And knowing things that there was no way he could have possibly known, to boot?

Either Henry was the absolute best liar Ellie had ever met, he was the most lucid insane person that Ellie had ever met…or he was telling the truth.

But even if he was, Ellie could tell that she was missing valuable information. True or false, Henry’s story was incomplete. And she needed to know more to get to the bottom of things once and for all. She needed Henry to complete his tale so that she could make her final judgment on Henry Stickmin. Either Henry was telling her the truth, no matter how much it seemed to violate the laws of reality…or his web of deceptions or delusions would completely fall apart.

“So you did your little airship mission through four different ways,” Ellie curtly summarized. Even if she was _ever so slowly_ starting to believe Henry’s story and warm up to him, she still had to act otherwise _just_ in case this was nothing but another betrayal in the making. “And if I remember correctly, you escaped the Wall through five different ways.”

“The Entity wouldn’t let me move on with my life unless I went through all of them,” Henry added. “Considering that He already seemed to be pulling a lot of the strings, I wasn’t going to try and mess around with someone who can control time itself.”

“I suppose I can’t blame you for that,” Ellie grudgingly conceded. “So what happened next?”

Henry took a deep breath and sighed. “All of it would come together,” he answered. “My decisions and actions, those would shape the biggest and most important part of my life would become. Everything I did on the airship and to escape the Wall would wrap up…for the grand finale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I think this is a good place to stop. Henry is ever so slowly starting to win Ellie over. He managed to blow Ellie’s mind away yet again, this time with the revelation that he knows about Ellie’s force powers, a closely guarded secret that she certainly wouldn’t give away to any random stranger and especially not a traitorous enemy. Still, she’s not fully convinced yet, and the big bombshell is yet to come. You guessed it, Completing the Mission is next. And what I have planned will finally be revealed.


	5. The Secrets of Henry Stickmin, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, finally found some additional time on my hands, so here we go! It’s time for Complete the Mission, and Henry’s got a lot to say. However, the reason why he ended up with the Toppat Civil Warfare ending is one that will have to be saved for next chapter. This one just ended up being far too long for me to fit in one chapter.

_Immediately After Henry’s Escape from the Wall_

Henry sighed in relief as he flew in the back of Charles’ helicopter. He had finally done it. He had finally gone through all five possible escape routes out of the Wall. Although to be honest, only three of them had brought any sort of satisfaction in his accomplishment. Part of him still felt terrible about that one timeline where he had left behind that red-haired woman at the Wall (which made him much happier about the timeline where he HAD escaped together with her), and the less said about the timeline where he had called on the Toppat Clan to bust him out, the better.

The background around him began to whiten and fade, signaling the now-familiar arrival of the Entity. However, instead of his surroundings merely dimming but still being present, this time they faded completely into nonexistence, leaving Henry in a white void. “Uhh…Entity?” Henry asked, looking around nervously.

 **“Ah, Henry…”** the Entity responded cordially. **“You’ve managed to complete all five possible routes. Congratulations. You’ve completed this part of the task that I’ve assigned you.”**

“How many more tasks are there?” Henry questioned. “How many more big events,” he put the last two words in air quotes, “will there be in my life.”

 **“Just one,”** the Entity answered, prompting Henry to breathe a sigh of relief. **“The biggest and most important event by far,”** he added smugly.

There was a flash, and suddenly Henry found himself looking at a…control panel of some kind, the mechanical contraption’s existence a sharp contrast to the emptiness that surrounded him. The panel looked similar to something Henry would expect to find in a military establishment, and it was divided in two sides. On the left, there were four panel-like buttons, each with a different image on them. Henry quickly realized that each button represented a different route that he had taken: the Pure-Blooded Thief, the Relentless Bounty Hunter, the Government-Supported Private Investigator, and the Rapidly Promoted Executive. On the right, there were five buttons instead of four: the Ghost Inmate, the International Rescue Operative, Presumed Dead, Convict Allies, and the Betrayed. In the bottom center of the panel was a giant Red button with the word LAUNCH written on it.

 **“I can see that you’re starting to realize what’s going on,”** the Entity continued. **“The events that took place when you infiltrated the Toppat Clan’s airship and escaped from the Wall are coming together. In no less than _16_ different ways.”**

Henry’s jaw dropped. “SIXTEEN?” he spluttered. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” He had already been surprised by how many ways his life could have played out back when he only had four or five options to worry about. Sixteen…he grabbed his head and shook it in confusion and disbelief. It was just too much to think about.

 **“Incredible, isn’t it?”** the Entity agreed. **“There are so many ways your life can play out, far beyond you could have possibly imagined. Which brings us to this control panel.”** Henry turned his attention back to the panel in question. **“You will choose one route on the left side, and one route on the right. After you have chosen the appropriate combination, press the Launch button to begin with. Each combination will play out your life in a specific way, each of them unique and different from the others. You ultimate objective is the same: complete all 16 routes, and then your task will be complete.”**

“Okay.” Henry was about to contemplate what combination to start with first, when a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Wait…when all this is done, which route will be the one I ACTUALLY take for the rest of my life?”

But there was no answer. Henry returned his gaze to the control panel, only this time he was looking at it with more than a little suspicion. There was something about the Entity that was bothering him, something that felt off. And it was just enough for Henry to know with absolute certainty that he would NOT be given complete control over his fate, or whatever the true outcome would be.

_Present Day_

“…you got fucked over, didn’t you?” Ellie asked quietly.

“Yes,” Henry agreed. “But not in the way you might think. I never really trusted the Entity completely. You know that saying, if something’s too good to be true, it probably is? I had a feeling that I was going to get screwed over in some way, and I tried to think about how to work around it.”

“So what did you do?” Ellie challenged. _If_ Henry’s story was true, then she was starting to be more sympathetic to him, as much as she hated to admit it. But she certainly wasn’t going to openly warm up to him, so long as the possibility of him being a liar or a madman still remained, as less likely as those were starting to become.

“I knew for a fact that I wanted to save one of the best outcomes for last,” Henry answered pensively. “But I also wanted to do a good outcome first, just in case the whole thing was a giant trick. The Entity could make it so I was only do one outcome before ending it all, or at the very least make it so that the first outcome was the real one. The very first ending I did was the route in which I became a bounty hunter pardoned by the Government, and I escaped the Wall with you.”

“That was the one where you handed just Reginald over to the Government, got a pardon from them, and left the desert in a tank, right?” Ellie clarified.

“Yeah,” Henry confirmed. “It wasn’t the best outcome that I wanted, but it was a good one for the two of us, and I figured it was a safe starting choice.” He smiled faintly, his eyes glazing over at the memories. “Together, we crashed the Toppat Clan’s train as it was making its way over to the rocket launch base. We stole their train cart filled with cash and killed the Right Hand Man when he became leader as he tried to stop us. And with all that gold, we became unbelievably rich.”

Ellie quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t think a lot of the Toppat Clan would be very happy to hear that,” she commented dryly.

Henry shrugged. “Any route where I _didn’t_ join the Toppat Clan would have me as their enemy by default, as it turns out,” he responded evenly. “Nothing I could really do about that. And I had a _very_ good reason not to trust the Toppat Clan when I started my missions, as you’ll soon see.”

Ellie’s mind went back to Henry’s facial expressions when she had overthrown his rule of the Toppat Clan. The recognition, the regret, the resignation, the solemn acceptance of his fate…it all made sense now. All those strange emotions on his face…they suddenly made much more sense, _if he had seen all this before._ “You’ve done this timeline before,” Ellie pointed out. When Henry nodded, she pressed on. “When you were doing your order, when did you do this one first?”

“Fourth,” Henry answered immediately. “I didn’t want to do it first for the reason that I told you, but I didn’t want to save it until the end later, in case the Entity decided He wanted to cut me off. I couldn’t tell what He was thinking, but He _wasn’t_ entirely unpredictable. After I got through the first two without Him stopping me, I figured that the Entity wouldn’t want to cut off his entertainment too early when He was enjoying Himself with all the shit I went through. I had a feeling that the timelines where I had abandoned you at the Wall were going to be some of the bad ones. Although, surprisingly, that wasn’t actually the case most of the time.”

“Wait, WHAT?” Ellie spluttered. “If you left me behind in the Wall, and I escaped on my own, there was NO way I wasn’t going to hunt you down and get revenge!”

“And you absolutely did in this particular timeline,” Henry agreed. “The timeline that would, in pretty much any other circumstance, led to a civil war between Toppats. But in the others…you weren’t a factor at all, to be honest. I think it’s less of the fact that you didn’t want revenge, and more that you couldn’t.”

“And how do you figure that out?” Ellie challenged skeptically.

“You simply wouldn’t be able to,” Henry explained. “In one ending, the Government would be protecting me, and you wouldn’t be stupid enough to challenge the entire Government. Galeforce is a decent guy and he might disapprove on a personal level, but he has no reason to support you over me when I’ve helped the Government out in a huge way and you’re just a thief with a rap sheet of your own. As for the timelines where I was a thief on my own and a bounty hunter, I didn’t have any connection to the Clan in the first one, and the second one was because of Right Hand Man’s personal grudge. So you wouldn’t have any way to find me. I know you had connections with the Toppat Clan even before you became the leader, so the route where I joined with the Toppats is the only one where it makes sense for you to find me and get your revenge.”

Ellie nodded reluctantly. Henry’s logic did make sense. And once again, he had dropped a tidbit of information indicating that he knew far more than he should. The red-haired woman wouldn’t have told anybody about her network of connections, especially not someone who was a traitor and an enemy.

“I hated doing that route from the moment it started,” Henry admitted. “It was one of the few where I was happy to just finish it off and start over at the mission control panel as soon as possible. Out of 16 possible endings, there were only 3 of those like that.”

“If those were the worst endings,” Ellie questioned. “Then what were the best ones?”

Henry smiled fondly. “The best endings I had were ones in which I had a partner with me. You were one of them, Ellie. There were four endings that I partnered up with you to complete our missions, and those were easily among the best I’ve ever had. But my other partner was a government agent that I worked with for a couple of the missions that I sided with the Government on. He was a helicopter pilot named Charles Calvin. He was always wearing these big red headphones out of his ear. He might have been goofy, and he wasn’t necessarily the brightest bulb, but he was still a great guy who knew how to get shit done. We did a lot of cool things together, with successes arguably just as huge as the ones that we accomplished.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “It sounds like you liked working with the Government just as much as you liked working with the Toppats,” she pointed out.

Henry shrugged. “It’s not like I had a choice,” he countered. “I was going to have to work with and against both the Toppats and the Government anyway at some point or another just because of the Entity. I might as well make the most out of it and enjoy myself along the way.”

It was a valid point, Ellie had to admit. “You said you had reasons not to trust the Toppat Clan,” she brought up an earlier point Henry had made. “Why?”

Henry’s eyes darkened and a scowl crossed his face. “Because of one of the endings,” he muttered. “The one where I called for the Toppat Clan to bail me out, but Reginald betrayed me. He caught me by the hand when I launched myself from the Wall and towards the Airship, only to a throw me off and watch me fall thousands of feet into an icy river. The only reason why I didn’t die was because some Russian doctor rescued me and turned me into a cyborg. And then I went off to attack the Toppat Clan Airship and get my revenge against Reginald for what he did to me. Right Hand Man’s cyborgs were better and stronger than mine, and he was more experienced in fighting, but I had the Entity’s power of time and my own bag of tricks to beat him out. Afterwards, I caught up to Reginald and trapped him against the Airship as it was about to crash into this very rocket, but he shot my cybernetic back and my life support systems just before the rocket ship collided.”

Henry shuddered, and a haunted look appeared in his eyes. “The explosion…I can still see it in my nightmares,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “I can still see the roaring flames, the screams, the destruction. I don’t think a single Toppat Clan member survived. And right at the end, Reginald had just one question for me before he died, mere minutes before my own death.” He looked up into Ellie’s eyes. “Was it worth it?”

“It wasn’t, was it?” Ellie answered quietly.

Henry shook his head. “No…it wasn’t. I might not have liked the Toppat Clan at the time, but killing every single one of them? Massacring them all, leaving nothing but death and destruction behind? Even back then, before I knew what I did about Reginald, I knew that it wasn’t worth it. You have no idea how relieved I was to end up back at the selection panel, Ellie. Even the Entity didn’t have anything to say about that one when I came back.”

Ellie tried not to imagine the ruin that Henry was describing. She knew how big the Airship and Space Station were. A collision of the two…the jungle would burn for months.

“Honestly, a lot of the missions had a similar theme,” Henry admitted. “A good chunk of them had me stealing a bunch of gold or treasure from the Toppat Clan successfully. It sounds like any thief’s dream, but compared to some of the other things I’ve done, those were honestly kinda boring in comparison.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Honestly, the best one out of those was when I stole the Norwegian Emerald from the Toppat Space Station…and actually managed to blow it up.”

Ellie’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute…” she realized. “THAT’S how you know about the Supreme Dominance laser’s weakness?”

Henry nodded. “The giant laser reflected right off the Norwegian Emerald that I enlarged with a Shrink-N-Grow device, cutting the space station clean in half. And even without that, the actual orb that fires the laser is a giant target. One lucky shot on it, and the whole space station goes bye-bye. Probably with an even bigger explosion than the one that happened when I cut the station in half.”

Ellie sighed. She _really_ needed to talk to the engineers about that laser. It might have sounded really cool in theory, but in practice it might be a lot more trouble than it’s worth. Outwardly, she put on an aggressive façade again, although it wasn’t harsh or vicious like it had been earlier in the interrogation. “I don’t really care about all that. I want to know about the timelines where we escaped the Wall together. You already mentioned the one you did first, the one where you captured Reginald and set up a reputation as a bounty hunter. What about some of the others?”

To her surprise, Henry smiled again, and it was the happiest smile she had seen from him so far. “They were easily some of the best missions I’ve been a part of, probably THE best if I’m being completely honest,” Henry answered, his voice and eyes once again showing nothing but sincerity. “After so many missions where I had to figure out everything myself, alone with nobody to depend on, you have no idea how refreshing it was to have a partner, equal, even friend. Someone I could trust.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you have that Government Pilot you mentioned?”

Henry shook his head. “It wasn’t the same,” he denied. “Sure, Charles was this in some routes, but I mean somebody just like me. A fellow thief who understood me more than a Government agent ever could.”

“And what exactly did we accomplish together?” Ellie questioned, seeing this as another opportunity to test Henry’s honesty.

Henry grinned. “You have no idea,” he replied earnestly. “I already mentioned how we raided the Toppat Clan’s train and stole their gold, but that wasn’t even the craziest thing we did together. In the route where I was just a thief who stole the Romanian Ruby from the Toppats, we followed your lead all the way to the Jungle, planning on signing up with the Toppats with the Wall chasing behind us. We made it all the way up to the top of the rocket, where we met up with Reginald and Right Hand Man just as Charles blasted open part of the rocket top. Believe it or not, there were actually _two_ endings for that particular path. One in which we fully signed up with the Toppats as its newest recruits. And another in which we joined the Government instead and single-handedly blew up the rocket by destroying the support beams, earning us both pardons in the process.” The happy expression on his face turned sadistic and darkly satisfied. “And in both of those, we killed Dmitri and Grigori. Serves those fuckers right,” he sneered.

Ellie smirked back, her expression perfectly mirroring Henry’s own. “I saved two of the best timelines for last,” Henry continued his explanation. “I was the Toppat King in one of them, and a Private Investigator working directly under the Government in the other. And whichever side the two of us were on, we gave them a huge victory. The one where we worked with the Government was my favorite, because it was the only one where I could work together with both of my friends and allies. Infiltrating the base and stopping the Toppat rocket launch with the two of you?” His face spread into a grin. “It was a dream come true, especially since I actually used the distraction dance I showed you earlier to distract an entire room full of Toppats about to kill us.”

Ellie stared blankly at him. “You’re kidding…” she deadpanned.

“Nope!” Henry snickered. “It actually worked!” The smirk faded a bit. “Although maybe sending the Rocket to the Wall was a bit much. I don’t want to think about what Dmitri did to them, after all that…”

Ellie shuddered. The corrupt warden of the Wall would no doubt have a field day if he managed to singlehandedly claim all the members of the Toppat Clan for his cruel prison. “And let me guess,” she ventured. “We stopped the Government from attacking our launch site when you were the Toppat King but still helped me escape?”

Henry nodded. “Yeah…and that was also one of the endings where I learned that Reginald really wasn’t as bad as I thought he was.” He shook his head. “Turns out, the reason why he backstabbed me at the Wall wasn’t because he was a selfish bastard who only wanted to keep rule over the Clan for himself. He genuinely wanted what was best for the Clan. A random thief who betrayed the people who hired him and offered him a pardon? Somebody with no tested leadership skills who hadn’t shown any proof that he deserved to be leader or even that he deserved respect? I could have easily been a disaster in the making, even though I did all right for myself in the days after I claimed the title of Toppat Clan Leader from Reginald. But there were not one, but _two_ mission timelines where I personally saved the Toppat Clan’s rocket launch from a Government Raid, putting myself right in the action and the risk of harm’s way to save the Clan, acting like how a good leader should. Reginald saw this and saw that I was truly dedicated to the Clan. When he caught me by the hand in one of those timelines in the exact same way that he did back at the Wall, he helped me up instead and accepted my leadership gratefully. Reginald was happy to accept my leadership so long as I proved myself, and I was happy to give him and Right Hand Man secondary leadership roles, just below myself and you.” He sighed. “I genuinely do respect them, and I do think it’s a shame that they both died even if we were on bad terms here.”

Ellie scowled. “In a really messed up way, I suppose I should be thanking you for my leadership position then, even though I’m not really any happier about this than you are.” She gave Henry a glare, although it wasn’t nearly as venomous and hateful as it had been back at the start of the interrogation. “So you’re saying that we were partners and allies in 4 out of the 16 timelines that we had to go through? All right, I can believe that, assuming that your story is true to begin with. But I still don’t get why you went through all this trouble to surrender yourself to me and offer a one-sided deal that pretty much gives me everything I wanted. Hell, I don’t understand why you’d choose this particular shitty timeline if the others were so much better. So why the hell did you pick the one where we end up as enemies and Reginald and Right Hand Man both end up dead? It doesn’t make any damn sense!”

Henry sighed, a look of sadness and resignation appearing on his face. “I knew this question was coming, but it doesn’t make answering it any less painful,” he muttered. Looking up at Ellie, he continued. “Even though things seemed to be going along smoothly as far as completing the missions was concerned, I was still worried that the Entity had a trap for me of some kind. I did the ending where I was the Toppat King and you were my Right Hand Lady second to last, and the ending where Charles, you, and I all worked together for the Government last. Two great ending, and if the Entity picked one or the other as my ultimate fate, I was happy with either one.”

Henry’s face darkened. “I should have known it wouldn’t be so simple,” he muttered. “All those FAILS I went through should have drilled the message home. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. And my luck had been too good for it to last.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And that’s Henry’s perspective on Completing the Mission for you! I couldn’t touch every single one of the 16 missions in his and Ellie’s conversation, because that would take far too long to complete. Most of the ones I focused on were either timelines that involved Ellie in some way, or timelines that involved the Toppat Clan. I didn’t focus on the ones that involved the Government as much or ones that focused on Henry going solo, mainly because it would make the chapter too long and I highly doubt Ellie would have given a shit about those.
> 
> Also, I mentioned 2 of the 3 "Bad" endings of Completing the Mission. If you're wondering why I forgot about Valiant Hero, let me assure you...I didn't forget.
> 
> Next chapter will finally answer the question about why Henry was forced into the Toppat Civil Warfare ending. I hope you guys enjoyed!


	6. The Secrets of Henry Stickmin, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Here we go, guys. The reason why Henry was forced to take the Toppat Civil War route, when everything seemed to be going so well. I’m happy to report that nobody quite guessed the reason correctly, which means that nothing I write for my big revelation will be fully anticipated. And with that, let’s get going!

“So what happened?” Ellie pressed. “You said that everything seemed to be going well. You made sure to do two endings where we escaped the Wall together, one with the Toppat Clan and one with the Government and that helicopter pilot friend of yours.” Her tone grew sharper. “So what the hell happened?”

Henry sighed. “At first, everything seemed to be going just fine. The Entity didn’t interrupt the timeline like he’d always done, or try to contact me. It seemed like I’d finally done it. Sixteen timelines, with one of the best ones saved for the end. General Galeforce welcomed you after Charles and I vouched for you, and it looked we were going to be one of the most elite teams working for the Government.”

His eyes darkened. “And then everything went horribly wrong. We went on a mission together. It should have been a simple reconnaissance mission, nothing we couldn’t handle. But then it turned out that the group of criminals we were investigating were far, far worse than anything we could have imagined. They had hidden a factory where that was making bombs that they planned to use to hold several cities hostage and blow them up if the Government didn’t agree to their demands. We knew that we didn’t have enough time to contact General Galeforce and wait for reinforcements…so we had to go in and sabotage the factory, hopefully destroy it with a huge explosion ourselves. Charles had to go in the field with us, a helicopter was way too obvious to be spotted and we needed as many of us as possible to stop this in time.

Ellie felt a cold chill run down her spine, but said nothing. She had a bad feeling she knew where this was going.

Henry’s grim expression all but confirmed it for her. “We snuck in the building late at night when the security was weaker,” he continued. “We managed to take some of their explosives and pile them together, but we were caught on surveillance just as we were about to end. We couldn’t let the mission fail, though. Not when so much was at stake. One of us had to escape, to tell the General what had happened. And you guys…”

“…we picked you, didn’t we?” Ellie asked quietly.

Henry nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to leave you guys!” he nearly shouted, startling Ellie. “I didn’t want to leave you guys,” he continued in a much more subdued tone, “but you guys insisted that I be the one to get out. The two of you distracted everyone with your guns while I made a break for it, and I managed to get out of the building just a few seconds before…” his voice cracked and tears began to appear in his eyes, “…before…”

_In an Alternate Timeline…_

Henry watched in pure, undiluted horror as the factory erupted in a gigantic explosion, feeling the heat and power of the blast even from the safe distance he had managed to reach thanks to hijacking one of the Jeeps. As he stared at the fiery wreckage of the factory that they had infiltrated, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the two closest friends he had ever made throughout the history of his long and lonely life were gone.

Henry let out a scream of despair as his mind fully processed the deaths of Ellie and Charles. They had both given their lives to save their country from something that was even worse than the Toppat Clan in its own way, and there was nothing he could do about it. His abilities to stop time, make choices, and undo fails…they were nowhere to be found. Even after all the adventures he had been through, he had ended in the same place that he had started.

Completely and utterly alone.

Henry wiped the tears from his eyes, determined to not let his best friends’ sacrifice be forgotten. He was about to contact General Galeforce, when he felt a familiar sensation. He felt time slow down, saw the background fade into the white void. After so many months, the Entity had finally returned.

**“Well, well…”** the Entity murmured, His voice echoing through Henry’s mind. **“It appears that the ending that you thought would be your Happy Ending…didn’t turn out to be so happy after all.”**

“How the hell did this happen?” Henry demanded. “Charles, Ellie, and I…we were a team! Triple Threat, just like we called ourselves! They were my closest friends, and we worked so well together! How could THIS,” he gestured towards the white void, still picturing the wreckage of the factory in his mind, “have happened?”

**“Just because your ending was happy immediately,”** the Entity countered, **“doesn’t mean that you and your friends would continue to be equally as fortunate in the long term. Everyone’s luck runs out in the end. But why not?”** The control panel from before appeared again. **“Choose another combination, one that you have already done before, and see where that path leads you. But be warned: I will not allow you to pick Triple Threat again.”**

Henry perked up at the unexpected opportunity. “You’re actually going to…?” he asked hopefully, before suddenly becoming wary. “Wait…how do I know this isn’t a trick of some kind?” he continued suspiciously.

**“Would you rather continue on your current path?”** the Entity challenged. Henry thought about living a life without Charles or Ellie and shuddered.

“No…” he answered quietly.

**“Then choose your destiny once again,”** the Entity commanded. Henry looked back over the control panel…and made his choice.

_The Present_

“What did you choose?” Ellie questioned. Her belief that Henry was a liar and a traitor was eroding even further…she could see the genuine grief and despair in Henry’s face as he had described the tragic end of the Triple Threat Team.

“I decided to go with the second best ending,” Henry explained. “The Toppat King ending, where I was the king of the Toppat Clan and you were my Right Hand Lady. The next several months after the success of the rocket launch were some of the most prosperous that the Toppat Clan ever faced. The two of us led many successful raids all around the world. Reginald and Right Hand Man were easily two of our best operatives, and they were below only us when it came to leadership. The Clan loved us, not just because we were so successful and stole so much money and treasure that we barely knew what to do with it, but because you and I often led those raids personally. Reginald might have been a great leader in his own way, but he often stayed in the back and had others do the work out in the open. The fact that we were willing to lead personally and put our own lives at risk…I don’t think there was a single member of the Toppat Clan who didn’t love us,” he smiled faintly at the memories. Even Reginald admitted to me privately that I was an even better leader than he had been.”

Ellie frowned. “The way you’re saying that makes me feel that everything went to shit again,” she commented nervously.

Henry’s smile disappeared and he sighed. “That’s because it did,” he muttered. “This time, it was the Government that did us in. They secretly developed a fleet of spaceships, and although they weren’t nearly as large as our space station was, it was enough to give us a serious challenge. We were able to fight them off for a while, but then somebody rammed their ship straight into the space station’s core, causing it to go haywire.” The weird way Henry said that made Ellie think he knew who had been the one to try such a daring maneuver, but she didn’t interrupt. “We had to evacuate everyone quickly before the space station exploded, and because we were two of the main leaders of the Clan, we decided to split up to help as many people as possible.” Henry’s face fell, and Ellie had a bad feeling she knew what was going to come next. “That was the last time I saw you, Ellie. We communicated with each other for a while by cell phone for a while, but just before the space station exploded…you cut off abruptly, and I couldn’t connect with you again no matter how many times I tried. But I could guess what happened.” His voice grew shaky and he lowered his head. “I’d lost you for the second time.”

By now, Ellie was starting to understand the true depths of Henry’s struggles. He had now done two endings, two endings in which he had shared his life with her as an equal and friend. Both of those endings had seemed happy at first, with several months of success and joy, but in the end everything had abruptly and violently come crashing down. “Every happy ending you did ended up that way, didn’t it?” she asked quietly.

“I didn’t do all of those happy endings,” Henry sighed, “but I did do one more just to be sure. This time, I picked the ending where Charles and I worked together. I wasn’t sure if the horrible luck was tied to you, but I decided to go with my other friend just to be safe,” he shook his head. “But it didn’t matter. That ending ended in a way similar to Triple Threat, a giant mess. And by now, I had started to realize something wasn’t right.”

Ellie gritted her teeth. “The Entity,” she guessed with a growl.

Henry nodded grimly. “Yep,” he agreed. “I knew that He was toying with me. I knew that He saw me as entertainment and that He wasn’t helping me because he cared or anything like that. But I didn’t know just how cruel He actually was until then…and if I there was ever a time when I could have done anything about it…by that point it was way too late.”

_The Void_

The first time Henry had had one of his potential paths lead to a tragic end, he had been horrified and depressed. The second time that had happened, he had felt those very same emotions, but with suspicion of the Entity being thrown in. And now that this had happened for the third time, all he could feel was rage.

“What the hell, Entity?” he shouted furiously into the void. “That’s three, THREE endings that have gone completely to shit! I can believe that one of my seemingly happy endings turned out to be a tragedy. Two is pushing it. But three in a row? There’s no way that this is a coincidence!” His eyes narrowed as he voiced his suspicions. “You’re doing this, aren’t you?” he accused. “You’re ruining the rest of my life after I complete my missions, aren’t you?”

For several seconds, there was a tense silence. Then, the Entity began to laugh. And it wasn’t just the amused laughter that He had given whenever Henry had failed in a particularly humorous or overdramatic laughter. This laughter was chilling and cruel, and couldn’t be described as anything but evil.

**“Heh heh heh heh heh…heh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!”** the Entity laughed mockingly. **“So you’ve finally figured it out. Yes, Henry…I was the one guiding the winds of fate to turn against you every time you completed one of your so-called happy endings. Happy endings that you don’t deserve.”**

“What do you mean I don’t deserve them?” Henry shouted furiously. “I played your games, just like you asked! I figured out the right choices to make, and died making the wrong ones!”

**“And yet…”** the Entity hissed. **“You would have failed time and time again without my aid. Without my help guiding you, giving you options to choose from and as many retries as you wanted whenever you failed, you wouldn’t have known the first thing about how to succeed in any of the many dangerous situations that you faced throughout the timelines. You wouldn’t have even made it past the Bank. You would have dug underground and hit that gas pipe, like the idiot you are, and blown yourself to pieces. You should be grateful I even bothered to save your life to begin with. Without me, you wouldn’t have even lived long enough to meet Charles or Ellie, let alone befriend them.”**

“Then what do you want?” Henry demanded in frustration. “Am I just your eternal chew toy now, doomed to repeat the same events over and over again with every ending leading to another failure and tragedy? Is that it?”

**“Oh, no…”** the Entity chuckled, amused. **“That would be utterly tedious. The idea of spending an eternity playing with you as my toy is just as unappealing to me as it is to you. The entertainment value you provide me would dry up to nothingness far too soon. And besides…I am not _entirely_ without mercy.”**

Henry was surprised by how sincere the Entity sounded with the last part of his sentence, but by now he knew better than to trust blindly. “Then what do you want?” he repeated the question, this time more subdued.

**“Leaving you with a happy ending when you complete a mission, a happy ending that you barely deserve, would be far too predictable. Far too _boring,”_** the Entity explained, and Henry could hear the smirk in His voice. **“So instead, I’m going to leave you a choice. Out of all the endings that you have gotten from Completing the Mission, three of them ended with a negative outcome for you.”** There was a rush of power, and three large TV-like screens flickered to life in front of them. One featured a critically wounded cyborg Henry laying on a rock, his open eyes looking up lifelessly into the sky. Another featured Henry standing on a cliff face overlooking a beautiful beach in the sunset, saluting a gravestone with a pair of red earmuffs over him. And the final screen showed Ellie and Henry glaring at each other, bitterness and hatred in their eyes as they prepared to fight for control over the Toppat Clan that they had once shared in another timeline.

**“Revenged,”** the Entity hissed. **“Valiant Hero. And Toppat Civil Warfare. The three endings that ended poorly for you in comparison to the others. You must choose one of these three timelines to establish as your permanent fate. There will be no retries after this, Stickmin. Once you make your choice, it cannot be changed. And you will have no choice but to see where the path defined by that decision will lead.”**

Henry scowled. “So instead of giving me a happy ending and ruining it for me,” he muttered. “You’re just going to force me to pick an already bad end and then see how much you can fuck it up even harder for me.”

**“No,”** the Entity denied, surprising Henry. **“I will not interfere in your fate after you make your choice. There is such a thing as being _too_ cruel, even for me. And this also means that if you can somehow take one of these tragic endings and reverse the wheel of fate so that you can end it on a happier and more successful note, then I will not attempt to interfere in that either.”**

“Why should I trust you?” Henry demanded with a snort. “You’ve already ruined multiple timelines for me. Why would this be any different?”

**“Because unlike when you were completing the missions I set for you,”** the Entity explained, and the malice in His voice had disappeared for a moment, **“this time you will have to rely on nothing but yourself. And if you are able to make a true happy ending from such a terrible beginning with only your own capabilities, then you will truly earn my respect and I salute you.”** The mocking amusement returned as He added, **“That is, of course, assuming you are even capable of it to begin with.”**

Henry resisted the urge to retort and forced his attention back on the 3 screens. Three different endings, each terrible and depressing to think about in their own ways. The thief had made many different choices ever since the Entity had entered his life, but Henry knew that this one would be the most important of them all.

_Present Day_

“And you chose _this_ ,” Ellie gestured around her, her anger flaring. “You chose the timeline where the two of us were archenemies.” She marched up to Henry and leaned down until her face was inches from his, glaring fiercely. “Your explanation better be _fantastic_ ,” she hissed.

Henry nodded. “I knew you were going to say something like that,” he replied calmly. “And I can explain my decision. First off, let’s look at the Revenged ending. I hated that ending when it was done, and I’ve only hated it more and more since then. I might not have liked the Toppat Clan all that much back then, but to gruesomely kill each and every one of them in a fiery explosion?” He shook his head. “That wasn’t worth it even back then, and that was when I thought Reginald was just a selfish and cowardly traitor who only cared about himself. And knowing what I do now about him, that he does care about what’s best for the Clan and that he’ll gladly give up leadership to me if he believes it’s the right thing to do…that makes the whole ending even more pointless. All that death, all that destruction, for…what, exactly?”

“Nothing,” Ellie answered quietly, her rage cooling again.

Henry nodded. “It also doesn’t help that that’s the one ending that I die in at the end, so if I chose it I’d basically be committing suicide. I don’t mind dying if it’s for a good reason, but for a revenge that turned out to be completely pointless in the end?” He spat on the ground. “Fuck that!”

“Okay,” Ellie nodded. “I can understand you not wanting to go with the Revenged ending. Hell, I probably wouldn’t do that either.” Her eyes hardened. “But that doesn’t explain why you went with this fucked up route instead of Valiant Hero, or whatever the fuck it’s called.” She lifted her gun threateningly. “So what could have been so bad about that other route that you thought _this_ was better?”

“Because if I chose the other route my best friend DIES!” Henry shouted, his emotions finally getting the better of him as tears began to flow out of his eyes. Ellie was so surprised by the outburst that she lowered her gun unconsciously. “You don’t understand, Ellie…” he continued. “For most of my life, I was alone. Nobody gave a crap about me, and I couldn’t trust anyone. And then both you and Charles came into my life, and for the first time I had true friends. People I could trust!” He buried his face in the table. “I still see it in my mind…” Henry murmured. “Forcing to leave behind Charles as he was trapped on this doomed station. His final words to me…and the explosion that destroyed his life when he deserved so much better. And after losing both you and him, in _multiple_ timelines?” He looked up at Ellie again, and she could see that there wasn’t even the slightest hesitation or doubt in his eyes. “Yes. I’d take this any day.”

“But you would’ve lost us anyway!” Ellie pointed out the apparent flaw in his logic. “You burned your bridges with Charles when you sided with the Toppats, and you made me your sworn enemy when you left me behind at the Wall.”

“But at least you’d still be alive,” Henry countered. “Yeah, I left you behind, no matter how much I hated to do it. And yes, you’d hate my guts and want to hunt me down for revenge. But outside of that, where you are now isn’t all that bad. You managed to escape the Wall even without my help, and you’re now the leader of the Toppat Clan. And even though we might have gotten off to a horrible start, at least here I have a _chance_ to make things right with you or Charles. But Valiant Hero?” He shook his head vehemently. “That death isn’t something I can ever change.”

The former Toppat King of multiple timelines looked over at Ellie, who nearly flinched at the intensity of his gaze. “Tell me, Ellie, If you had to choose between your loved ones hating you and watching you die, which one would you pick?” he demanded in a hard voice.

“…”

“Tell me,” Henry insisted, and when Ellie still didn’t anything he slammed the table passionately with his fist and forcefully yelled the same words again. “TELL ME!”

“God damn it!” Ellie shouted back, hitting the interrogation table with her own hands. “I’d have done the same thing!” the words had a bitter taste in her mouth. She hated them. She hated that she had to say them, hated the truth they held. But she’d be a hypocrite if she didn’t accept them for what they were. “I’d have done the same thing,” she admitted again, this time more quietly. Her thoughts turned to her brother Jacob and her sister Velvet, both of whom she still loved dearly even though she hadn’t seen either of them for months now. And if she had to choose between them hating her and watching them be killed in some way, she’d have picked the first option too without any hesitation whatsoever.

Then, something clicked in the red-haired woman’s mind. “Wait…” she suddenly realized. “You said…loved ones. And you included me in that category. Why?”

To her surprise, Henry did something that he hadn’t done at all since being dragged into the interrogation: he blushed. “Ehhh…well…” he stumbled a bit with his words before continuinig. “Those timelines where we escaped the Wall together? We weren’t just close friends. We were…more than that.”

Ellie suddenly realized what Henry was trying to say. “Wait, WHAT?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “Are you saying…?”

Henry nodded in confirmation, his blush deepening. “We loved each other, Ellie. Soon after we succeeded in our missions together, we started dating. Sometimes, it was something normal, like going out to dinner together somewhere at a fancy restaurant. Other times, the jobs we did as either government agents or Toppat leaders were our “action” dates. But I honestly didn’t care what we did on those dates. No matter what we did, those were the happiest moments of my…”

“All right, NOW you’re bullshitting me,” Ellie interrupted with a shout, her old anger reigniting. “Look, I can believe a lot of things you’ve told me today. I can believe that you’ve lived through different timelines. I can believe that in another time and place, we could have been great friends. I can even believe that there’s some jackass deity thing fucking around with your life like that…hell, in a way it answers a lot of questions about how a random thief with no connections got so much shit done in his life. But saying that we were LOVERS?” She just couldn’t comprehend the idea of being in love with someone who had betrayed her and abandoned her to rot in one of the world’s cruelest prisons. Her eyes narrowed and she pointed her gun at Henry. “Prove it,” she hissed the challenge out.

“I already told you about your force powers,” Henry responded, barely blinking an eye at Ellie’s sudden hostility. Ellie was about to retort that this only proved that they had worked together, not that they were friends and certainly not that they were lovers, before Henry continued, “But I know that you’re not gonna be convinced with just that. You want something more. Something personal.”

Henry leaned forward and gazed in Ellie’s eyes intensely. “I know why you turned to crime in the first place,” he murmured. “I know that your family’s had it rough. Your brother, Jacob…he started a job early as a security guard at a museum, but it just wasn’t enough. You had to start a life of crime on your own, making your own connections and joining the crime world in your own way, because of your sister. Your younger sister, who is in the hospital right now suffering from a disease that you didn’t want to tell me even back when we were lovers. You did all this…” his voice was now barely above a whisper, “for them. And especially for her.”

Ellie clutched her gun tightly in her trembling hand, as though it were a lifeline. Stickmin knew. Stickmin somehow knew about this closely guarded secret that she kept bound to her heart. _Nobody_ knew about her true motivations for starting a life of crime outside of her family, certainly not the Toppats or any of the allies she had made before then. And there was no way in hell that she would have so much as given a hint of this to a random stranger, and certainly not a hated enemy who had stabbed her in the back.

But she needed one last bit of proof to be sure. “What was my sister’s name?” she asked, her voice low and racked with emotion. Before Henry could say anything, Ellie lifted her gun and pointed it at the man’s head, a frenzied look entering her eyes. “God damn you, Stickmin,” she snarled, “if you don’t answer my question correctly right now I’m going to blow your brains all over the fucking table! WHAT WAS MY SISTER’S NAME?”

Henry didn’t turn his head away from the woman threatening to kill him. “Velvet. Sapphire. Rose,” he answered without the slightest flinch or hesitation. “That’s your sister’s name.”

The gun fell out of Ellie’s hands and landed on the ground, forgotten, as Ellie slumped down onto her chair, her entire body trembling, her thoughts overwhelmed with roiling emotions and disbelief. Henry had gotten it correct. He’d even given her her sister’s middle name, something that she hadn’t even asked for. Which meant that…that…

Henry gave his lover of another timeline a sympathetic gaze. “I never wanted to leave you behind, Ellie,” he asserted quietly but firmly. “You weren’t just my partner or friend. You were someone I truly loved, and I would have been happy leaving all of this behind and spending the rest of my life with you.”

Ellie didn’t respond, her eyes still staring at the table as the last of her grudge against Henry crumbled. She could still feel those traces of hatred towards him, trying to convince her that this was nothing more than an elaborate trap by the former Toppat King to betray her for a second time and reclaim his throne. But now, in the face of all the evidence Henry had given her, those doubts rang empty and hollow.

Henry chuckled, but there was no mirth in it whatsoever. It was the broken laugh of a man who had gone through far too much in his life, and had all but given up hope. “But it’s too late for that, isn’t it?” he asked humorlessly. “This is all we have now. The missions that I thought lead to happy endings were nothing but a giant lie that lead to disaster.”

He cast his eyes down onto the table, and even through her own inner turmoil she could hear the defeat in his voice. “Why should one of the worst missions be any different?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. The reason why Henry was forced to stick with the Toppat Civil Warfare ending. I hope that the storyline I chose is something that satisfies you guys…and is also something that none of you saw coming. I wanted the Entity to be cruel, but not so overly cruel that He wouldn’t at least give Henry a chance, no matter how slim that chance may be.
> 
> There actually is a character named Jacob Rose who’s a security guard in the museum where Henry steals the Tunisian Diamond from. I went with the theory that Jacob and Ellie are related here, even though it is NOT OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED that this is the case. Ellie’s younger sister Velvet, however, is entirely my own idea.
> 
> Anyways, Henry has finally revealed the truth in full to Ellie, and it’s up to her to decide how to react to it. Whatever she may choose, one thing’s for certain. Everything that she thought she knew about Henry Stickmin was completely and utterly wrong.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed!


	7. A New Start

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And so we’ve finally arrived. Henry has spilled all of his secrets, and Ellie now knows the whole truth. It’s now up to her decide how to react to that truth…and what to do about it.

Henry and Ellie sat silently at the interrogation table, neither of them sure of what to do. Henry was staring down at the table, his expression utterly exhausted, defeated, and grieving for past friendships and loves that had been so cruelly ripped away from him by the Entity.

And Ellie…she didn’t know what to think. The story that Henry had finished telling her was insane, incredible, something that shouldn’t have been taken seriously in a million years…and yet Henry had provided countless evidence to support it. The warning about the government attack on the base, the weaknesses in the Toppat Space Station, her force abilities…

…her family.

It had been such a long time since Ellie had truly found herself at a loss. Even when she had been abandoned by Henry at the Wall, for reasons that it now appeared had been beyond his control, the new leader of the Toppats had been able to come up with her own plan to escape and get revenge. Now, though?

This was just too much. She needed someone else’s opinion.

Ellie got up from the table and left the room without a word. Henry didn’t react to her departure, instead simply waiting for her final verdict on him and his actions. Despite his despair and resignation, he could feel the faintest slimmer of hope in him…after all, Ellie hadn’t blown his brains out across the table yet.

Outside, Ellie closed the interrogation room door behind, looking at her two subordinates with a blank look in her eyes. Mr. MacBeth and Ahnoldt Schwarz stared back at her, seemingly just as stunned with Henry’s story as she was.

“What do you guys think?” Ellie finally broke the silence after several agonizing seconds.

Mr. MacBeth shook his head. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “If he hadn’t given all that evidence to back up his story, I would’ve called him either batshit insane or the worst liar in the world. But I don’t get either impression from him. All the advice he gave us makes sense.” He looked down at his gun. It had been his pride and joy to make it, but knowing what he did now about its weaknesses he couldn’t help but regard it with some faint suspicion. “I’m gonna have to get this thing out a lot more, that’s for sure.”

“We can’t kill him,” Ahnoldt added. “Even if ‘e is lying about leaving you behind, Boss, ’es far too valuable. Think of all da information we could get out of ‘im.”

“I’ve already made up my mind on that,” Ellie agreed quietly, keeping her voice down even though she was sure Henry couldn’t hear her due to the walls blocking out sound. “Henry’s given us a lot of information, and he’s definitely worth more to us alive than dead. Even if he is lying about…”

“…he’s not,” a new voice interrupted.

All three heads turned to look at the arrival. To their surprise, it was Albert Poshley who stood at the other end of the hallway. The senior member of the Toppat Clan had quietly entered the room at some point during the interrogation, completely unnoticed by either Henry or the other elite Toppat members.

“Mr. Poshley,” Mr. MacBeth greeted the elderly man respectfully. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“’Ow long you have been here?” Ahnoldt wondered.

“I heard most of the interrogation,” Albert answered. “More than enough to form my opinion.”

“And what do you think?” Ellie asked. She knew that Albert was one of the oldest members of the Toppat Clan, a member for far longer than most others. And she welcomed any advice he could give him.

“I’ve served in the Toppat Clan for many years,” Albert replied quietly but firmly. “I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of liars and deceivers in my time. And that boy,” he lifted his cane and pointed it at Henry, “that boy is no liar,” he finished.

“You believe he’s telling the truth, then?” Ellie wondered. Deep within her, she was starting to believe it too, but her own natural skepticism and the fury from Henry’s betrayal were still holding her from accepting Henry’s story fully.

“If he’s telling the truth?” Albert shrugged. “Who can say? I haven’t ever heard a story as strange as his before, especially one that seems to break the laws of reality. But if you ask me if _I believe_ he’s telling the truth?” he nodded. “Absolutely. I can see it in his eyes, his emotions, his voice. At the very least, he believes everything he’s told you. Every single word.”

Ellie shook her head in disbelief. “It’s just…so crazy to think about,” she muttered. “Even earlier today, I thought I’d finally get my revenge on Henry for betraying me at the Wall. I finally had him at my mercy and got myself a sweet, sweet prize in the Tunisian Diamond as a bonus seemingly for free. But now…I don’t think he’s lying, either,” she admitted. “He’s either nuts, or that story, impossible as it is, is the truth.”

“But if he is insane,” Albert countered. “How could he have given us such valuable insights? Or known so much about your life that you clearly never told him? Not once, not twice, but over and over again?” He shook his head. “As strange as it seems even to me, I find the idea of him being insane even more improbable than the story itself.” He smiled gently at her. “But at the end of the day, it’s your decision. You’re the one he wronged, for good reasons or no. It’s up to you to decide what to do with him.”

“…I know,” she whispered. And she knew what she was going to do. She turned around and opened the interrogation room door again. Henry looked up, wondering what was about to happen to him.

The first thing he noticed was Ellie’s face. Though it was still wary and uncertain, it was no longer hateful or even particularly hostile anymore. “Come on,” she said quietly, “let’s get you out of these handcuffs.”

The shock on his face must have been visible. “Don’t get me wrong,” Ellie warned, though her voice was only stern instead of filled with rage, “I don’t fully trust you yet. And I’m sure as hell not giving you back leadership of the Toppat Clan. But…” her features softened ever so slightly, and Henry could have sworn that he could see traces of the Ellie he had befriended and fallen with in happier timelines, “I think you are telling the truth, Henry, but I’m not just gonna blind take you word for it.”

She unlocked Henry’s cuffs, waiting at any moment for Henry to attack and reveal his entire story to be nothing but a grand deception. But he didn’t. He merely sighed with relief and got up. “This is already more than I was hoping, for be honest.”

Ellie nodded curtly and gestured for him to leave the room. Both Ahnoldt and Mr. MacBeth tensed when they saw Henry exit without his restraints, but relaxed once they saw that their leader had given them the okay. Albert Poshley, on the other hand, seemed to be taking it all in stride, a small smile on his face. “All right,” Ellie declared, her voice back in “business” mode but notably lacking the malice and wrath that it had held earlier, “here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to treat Henry here as a _guest with conditions_ , so to speak. We’ll bring him to one of the solitary bedrooms and that’s where he’ll stay for the next few days. When I say guest, I mean _guest_ ,” she emphasized, just to make abundantly clear that Henry was to be treated differently from this point forward. “No beating the crap out of him, no insulting him, no nothing. If anybody gets that right first, it’s _me_.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do I make myself clear?”

Everyone nodded. Ellie relaxed a little and continued. “We’ll feed him like we would any Toppat, and he’s allowed to go anywhere on the ship that isn’t a high security location. But I want him escorted by at least three people at all times wherever he goes, ideally by one of our better fighters. And he can only see Thomas Chestershire or Geoffrey Plumb with those escorts. Got it?”

The three Toppat elites nodded. When Ellie turned to ask the same question to Henry, he smiled. “Whatever works for you, works for me,” he assured her.

“I’m glad you agree,” she muttered. She gestured towards the Toppats to escort Henry back out of the interrogation chamber, and the Toppats did so. This time, they took the elevator up several floors and escorted Henry to one of the living quarter floors with several rooms. Some of the Toppats who were around looked up in surprise to see Henry with their leaders, and more significantly a Henry that seemed relatively unharmed and wasn’t being restrained by them. One glare from Ellie quickly sent them back to minding their own business.

The Toppats guided Henry over to a lone room, which was surprisingly luxurious given that it was only meant to be a spare room. Then again, the Toppats were a clan that prided themselves on wealth and status. They wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than comfortable living quarters, even for their spare rooms. “This is where you’ll be staying for now,” Ellie informed Henry. “I’ve got to think about everything you told me. If there really is some Entity that’s been fucking with our happy endings, we’re gonna have to think hard about what we’re going to do from here.”

Henry nodded. “I’ll try to think of something we can do,” he offered, before sighing. “It might take a while, though.”

Ellie gave him a smirk with zero humor. “We’re up in space. Time is all you have.”

Henry returned her quip with a thin smile of his own, before entering the room and lying down on the bed. After everything that had happened, he was too exhausted to think or do anything more than sleep. Ellie watched him fall asleep and then turned to her subordinates. “Make sure everyone on this rocket hears the orders I just gave you,” she ordered, a hint of menace briefly re-entering her eyes and voice to make it abundantly clear that the consequences for disobeying would not be pleasant. “Then get the rest of the Toppat leaders and meet me in our private conference room. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Mr. MacBeth, Albert, and Ahnoldt all nodded and left to carry out their instructions. Ellie then opened up her cell phone and called two random Toppats to act as guards outside of Henry’s door, both to make sure he didn’t try anything funny and to make sure he didn’t get any unexpected visitors, friendly or hostile. As she put the phone down, she gave one last loo kat Henry’s sleeping form. “Maybe you aren’t so bad after all, Stickmin,” she mumbled to herself before leaving.

For the next few days, all Henry could do was wait. He had no desire to cause any trouble for Ellie, and there wasn’t much we could or particularly wanted to do while waiting for Ellie’s next movie. Thomas and Geoffrey both came to check on him occasionally, and he spent those moments reassuring them that he was fine and wasn’t being treated cruelly by Ellie or any of her subordinates.

Ellie in the meantime, had spent the next several days talking with the other Toppat elites in the conference room, sharing the details of Henry’s story and asking for advice on what they should do. It was a process that had taken them longer than expected, since Ellie also had to deal with running the Toppat Space Station as a whole at the same time. To balance this out, Ellie had strictly forbidden _any_ type of raids or criminal activity on Earth for the time being. Even without factoring in Henry and what to do with him, Ellie wanted to make absolutely damn sure that the Space Station was running without any problems, and that any problems they _did_ have were fixed first and foremost. If a Government ship decided to pay them a little visit like Henry and Charles had in that timeline where the pilot had died, she did _not_ want to be caught flat-footed and be responsible for the entire station’s destruction.

It wasn’t until 5 days later that Ellie visited Henry’s room again. Her face thankfully didn’t look hostile or hateful again, so Henry guessed it was safe to assume that she hadn’t suddenly decided that he was lying after all. “Anything I can help you with?” he asked.

“A lot, actually,” Ellie replied, her voice even. “Time to get up, Henry.”

Henry got up from his bed. “What are we doing now?” he asked.

“We’re going to our private conference room,” Ellie explained. “I’ve been talking with the Toppat elites for the past few days. We need more information. Information that you might be able to give us.”

“Whatever you need to know, I’ll do my best to answer,” Henry replied as he followed Ellie down into the car. There were two other Toppats escorting them, no doubt to make sure that he didn’t try anything funny, but Ellie herself didn’t seem particularly concerned about a sudden ambush from him. “It’s a start, I guess,” he thought as he followed Ellie into the elevator. The elevator rose up a few more floors, and when it opened up this time Henry could see that they were in the massive rotunda that he had seen in past timelines. The ornate lobby that featured paintings of the Toppat Clan’s past leaders, the one spanning several floors. They had arrived at the bottom floor of that particular area, a part that Henry had never particularly paid attention to. Ellie guided Henry through the rotunda into a hallway and eventually a door that he had never seen before. She pressed a few buttons on a security pad and, once it had accepted her passcode, opened the door and gestured for Henry to enter.

Henry did so and found himself in a large conference room. The center of the room was covered by a round table that covered a good percentage of the room, its multiple legs bolted to the floor to prevent it from flying off in case the gravity generators ever failed. There were several padded office chairs surrounding the table, each similarly attached to the floor, most of which were currently occupied by a different Toppat Clan elite. There was also a larger and more ornate decorated chair that reminded Henry of a throne which was undoubtedly reserved for Ellie, and an empty chair across from the throne that Henry instinctively understood was for him. A giant TV screen hung over the conference room, which Henry guessed was so that the Toppat elites could connect their laptops to it and make any presentations as necessary.

Henry slowly approached the chair, carefully watching the other Toppat elites’ faces for any sign of hostility, but the most he saw were guarded expressions. As he sat down, Ellie sat down on her throne on the opposite side. “All right, guys,” Ellie called for their attention. “You’ve all been updated on the situation. Let’s all assume that he’s telling the truth for now. That he’s been through many different timelines because of some Entity out there, and what should have been his happiest endings turned out to be a complete disaster. Leaving him stuck here…in a timeline where he abandoned me at the Wall and I dethroned him from being the Clan Leader as revenge.”

“I never wanted to leave you behind, Ellie,” Henry reaffirmed his oath to her. “I hated myself for doing it. But I didn’t have any choice.”

“I know…” Ellie nodded in acknowledgment. “The question is…if there really is this Entity out there…what are we going to do now?”

Carol Cross was the first to speak up. “That’s why we brought you here, Henry,” she added, giving her former leader a stern glance. She didn’t have a particularly strong opinion of Henry either way before his dethroning. He had been too new and inexperienced in the art of leadership, not to mention the fact that he had stolen the mantle away from Reginald, who all of them had trusted. But to Henry’s credit, he had made a solid showing of himself for the few months where he _had_ been leader. The thief had managed the finances of the Toppat Clan surprisingly well, and his raids, while fewer in frequency than during Reginald’s time, were well thought-out and, most notably, had always been led by him personally. He hadn’t proved any more selfish than any other member of the Toppat Clan (being a member of a criminal organization DID come with some fundamental degree of selfishness, even one as closely knit as the Toppat Clan), and he certainly hadn’t been incompetent like Terrence Suave. Most of her negative opinion of Henry had come from his betrayal of Ellie, a betrayal that it now appeared had been caused by special circumstances. “More specifically, the endings that you did. We’d like you to describe them as much as possible, at least the important parts.”

“Hopefully, once we have a clearer picture,” Albert added, giving him a reassuring smile, “we’ll be able to come up with some more ideas.”

“Sure thing,” Henry immediately agreed. “You might want to write some of this down, though,” he warned. “There’s a lot for me to cover.”

In response, Sven Svennson wordlessly took out his laptop and connected it to the giant TV screen looming above them, which immediately flickered to life. For the next several hours, Henry described every single timeline that he had ever experienced when the Entity had commanded him to “complete the mission.” Some of them were ones that Ellie was already familiar with, mainly the ones where Henry had chosen to ally with Ellie to escape the wall instead of abandoning her. Others featured Henry cementing his allegiance to either the Government or the Toppat Clan depending on the events established by previous parts of the timeline, and playing a major role in defeating whatever organization he was opposed to at the time. Henry also described the timelines where he had robbed the Toppat Clan in some way, whether it was by stealing their train’s gold cart on the way to the space station or robbing the Norwegian Emerald (the Toppats looked both outraged at the theft and interested in the precious jewel). And then there were some of the more…unique and memorable timelines that deserved their own category. Sven had outright burst into laughter when he heard about the one timeline when Henry stole the entire Space Station single-handedly and successfully converted it into the world’s first space resort, and even the sterner Toppats couldn’t resist cracking a smile at the sheer absurdity of it all.

Still, there were some timelines that Henry was nervous to reveal. He couldn’t imagine them accepting a timeline where he had mindlessly pursued Reginald Copperbottom and destroyed the Toppat Clan brutally and violently in his thirst for revenge, or a timeline where he had worked with Charles to sabotage and destroy the Toppat Space Station. Fortunately, Ellie had apparently explained to the rest of the Toppat elites about these timelines and that Henry had soundly rejected them, because they didn’t show any reaction beyond grim, reluctant acceptance.

When Henry had finally finished explaining everything to the Toppat elites, there was a document open on the TV with 16 entries listed on it, each with a paragraph of information on them. Sven had worked diligently throughout Henry’s entire speech, making sure that everything important was listed and available for all of them to read over again if they needed it.

“So we have all this information and all the possibilities,” Mr. MacBeth stated, looking up at the TV screen. “What do we about it now?”

Immediately, the conference room burst into discussion as the various Toppat elites tried to brainstorm a solution on what was the best way to go forward. It was abundantly clear that the Toppat Space Station and even the Toppat Clan as whole could and had been destroyed in many of these timelines, and this was obviously a fate they wanted to avoid at all costs. They also wanted what was best for their leader as well; despite her sudden introduction to the mantle of Toppat Clan Leader, Ellie had been a very effective leader who had tolerated no-nonsense and really brought up the Clan’s efficiency and organization. Granted, she had been a tad bit ruthless and cold to her subordinates in the wake of Henry’s betrayal, but that anger had cooled over time and it no longer seemed to be an issue now in any case given that their relationship was starting to mend. Ellie and Henry didn’t join in any of the conversations, instead looking up at the TV screen with intense concentration, silently coming up with their own ideas to try and beat the Entity’s twisted game.

Then, after a seeming eternity, the spark of an idea formed in Henry’s mind. “Let me ask you guys a question,” he suddenly spoke up, prompting everyone else in the room to fall silent and turn their attention to him. “It’s a question I never thought to ask you guys back when I was still the leader,” a sheepish look crossed his face, “something that I probably should have.”

Ellie shrugged. “Well, I might have missed asking it too, so you might as well ask it now.” she commented dryly.

“What does the Toppat Clan care about most? Like, in terms of its goals?” Henry asked. “Is it the money and treasures you’re after? The reputation? Or the thrill of committing robberies and other crimes?”

The Toppat elites stared at him silently, causing Henry to worry that he might have inadvertently insulted them in some way. Then, Albert Poshley spoke up. “We do not believe in committing crimes just for the sake of it, Henry,” the elderly man explained. “We are a Clan first and foremost, and despite the…differences…that may often appear between individuals in a criminal organization, we do care about each other. But if you are asking about our material goals…the wealth and treasures are what we seek. And we plan our robberies carefully, with purpose. We are not barbarians who cause wanton destruction and death for the sake of it.”

“There was a Toppat leader in recent history,” Mr. MacBeth added, a scowl on his face. “His name was Terrence Suave. And he was the most incompetent piece of shit to ever lead this Clan. He launched raids and crimes that made no goddamn sense whatsoever, just so he could get a thrill out of it. A lot of those raids cost us good men just to satisfy his goddamn ego, and they caused a hell of a lot of destruction, more than what even we’re comfortable with. Was a damn good riddance when Reginald dethroned him and threw him off of the damn airship.”

“Speaking of Reginald, I just realized something,” Carol narrowed her eyes at Henry. “Reginald and Right Hand Man are both dead, crushed by _your_ escape pod. Mind giving us an explanation?”

Henry only barely resisted the urge to gulp as many of the other Toppat elites gave him hostile glares as well. The only ones who didn’t were Albert and Ellie, surprisingly. Henry sighed. “I respect Reginald,” he explained. “I really do. In the Revenged ending I thought he was just a selfish bastard who wanted to maintain control over the Clan no matter what, but I learned in two of the endings where I became King of the Toppats that he genuinely cared about the Clan, and what really mattered to him was that there was a competent, capable leader in charge. Whether it be him or me. I gained that respect when I saved the Toppat Clan from the Government, and we got along quite well after that even with me as the leader.”

Henry sighed. “Reginald was always fated to die in this route,” he admitted. “The Entity made it clear that whatever I did afterwards, the ending I chose to be the rest of my life would play out _exactly_ how it did when I was completing those missions. Reginald’s fate sucked no matter what I picked. In one ending, he dies and the entire Toppat Clan burns a fiery death alongside the two of us. In another, he lives…in prison, while the rest of the Toppat Clan is ruined with the destruction of their space station. And in this one, he and Right Hand Man die…but the Clan survives.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I would think that, if Reginald did care about the Toppat Clan in this timeline just as much as he did in the others, he’d give up his life to ensure its survival.”

There was some grumbling from the Toppat elites, but couldn’t fault Henry for making the decision he had made. Ellie had made it clear to them beforehand that Henry had chosen what he believed to be the best out of three terrible options, and they had to reluctantly agree with him. Out of the three “worst endings,” this one was the only one where the Toppat Clan was still strong and successful…even if it meant losing Reginald and Right Hand Man.

Carol nodded at Henry, grudgingly accepting his answer. As much as she hated to admit it, she would’ve done exactly the same thing in his shoes…which was the only reason she wouldn’t push the topic further.

“Anyways,” Henry continued, “the reason why I asked my question earlier…was because I needed to know the answer first. And now that I have…” a smile appeared on his lips, and Ellie noted that this was the first _genuinely hopeful_ smile he had given since arriving at the space station, “I think I have an idea. The Entity warned me that He wasn’t going to let me stick with any of the endings that I did…minus the three He offered me for my choice, obviously,” he added. “But what if we combined elements from some of the better endings? And what if we did something completely unexpected? Something that the Entity never once considered a possibility in sixteen different timelines?”

By now, he had everyone’s undivided attention, especially Ellie’s. “What are you thinking, Henry?” she asked intently. “What do you have in mind?”

“This idea might sound crazy, but I _think_ if we play our cards right we can actually pull it off,” Henry declared, his eyes glinting with excitement. “What if the Toppat Clan…went back to being on the right side of the law?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Cliffhangers sure are fun, aren’t they?
> 
> Ellie doesn’t really hate Henry anymore, but she’s not gonna blindly trust him either (especially after what happened last time). She’s a lot kinder to him now and certainly won’t mistreat him anymore like she did earlier in the day, but she’s still treating him with caution. Henry will have to put in the work to get her trust back again, that’s for sure.
> 
> As for Albert Poshley, you might remember him as the one of the elderly Toppat Clan elites in the Luxury Escape Pod of the “Valiant Hero” ending, the guy with the white hat, mustache, and monocle (aka NOT the mayor from “Stealing the Diamond”). Albert is easily one of the eldest Toppat Clan members we see, and he’s described as one of the wealthiest Clan members who also funds their operations. I like to imagine him as a wise mentor of sorts; assuming he’s been with the Clan for an extended period of time and didn’t join them late or something, I like to imagine that he has far more experience and wisdom to share to younger members like Ellie.
> 
> What is Henry’s idea, you may ask? It’s certainly a wild one, and one that will be difficult to pull off at that. But this is Henry Stickmin we’re talking about. A guy who has a knack for pulling off the impossible, guided by the Entity or no.
> 
> That’s all for now. Hope you guys enjoy!


	8. A New Toppat Trajectory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy New Year everyone! I was busy last week since my family visited for Christmas but I have some time nowadays so I figured now would be the best time for me to write another chapter! I find it kinda funny how in my other magnum opus fanfic, the author’s notes can easily stretch on to over a page, whereas here they’re just these tiny blurbs XD. Oh well, let’s get things moving!

“Wait…WAT?” Ahnoldt Schmidt exclaimed. “Wat do you mean by dat?”

“Listen to me!” Henry insisted, his eyes flashing with excitement. “I’m not saying that we turn ourselves over to the Government, or that we give up all our money and treasures. We’re still going to be the Toppat Clan, and stick with the Toppat Clan’s goals. I’m just saying that we should operate using legal methods and without committing crimes anymore.”

Mr. Macbeth scoffed. “Have you gone soft in the head, Stickmin?” he retorted. “And what makes you think we would wanna do that? Or that it’s even possible in the first place?”

“In almost every timeline, it was always the Toppat Clan and the Government fighting each other,” Henry explained. “With one of them usually beating the other, depending on which side I was on. The LAST thing that the Entity would expect would be for the Toppat Clan to stop fighting the Government, let alone start working WITH them instead.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Carol Cross snapped, but before she could say anything further she was interrupted by Albert clearing his throat.

“Hmm…” Albert began once the room quieted down. “Stickmin’s idea is honestly not without merit. Stopping our antagonism with the Government and possibly even working with them instead…it would certainly remove one of the biggest threats to the Clan as a whole, and allow us to operate without any fear of reprisal.”

“As long as we keep fighting the Government, we’re always gonna have to fight against the system,” Henry added. “But if we can bury the hatchet with them, not only can we work WITH the system, but we can make the system work FOR us. If any other criminals go after us, and we’re operating legally, then we can have the Government go after them instead and save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

Carol glanced over at Ellie. “Is that even possible at this point?” she asked.

Ellie stroked her chin thoughtfully. “If I’m remembering the events leading up to this timeline correctly, Henry betrayed the Government to become the leader of the Clan.” She turned to face Henry. “They’d sent you on the airship to either capture Reginald or find incriminating evidence on the Clan, is that right?”

Henry nodded. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “They had some dirt on a few of the leaders like Reginald and the Right Hand Man, but they didn’t have any hard evidence on the Toppat Clan as a whole even though they knew you were guilty. That’s what they needed me for.”

“So that means that the Government still technically doesn’t have any evidence to bring down the whole Clan,” Ellie realized with a small smile. “Well, I guess apart from us blasting off a Rocket in the Jungle.”

“Is there even a law against that?” Henry shook his head incredulously. “I have no idea.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ellie interrupted. “Apart from that, we haven’t technically committed any crimes yet that the Government can nail us on.”

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he asked incredulously.

“Really,” Ellie nodded. “After I took control over the Toppat Clan, I pretty much spent all of my time preparing the Space Station…and trying to hunt you down,” she added a bit sheepishly. Henry waved off the unspoken apology and she continued. “I made sure that we all kept a very low profile leading up to the launch, because if the Government got wind of what we were doing too early and invaded us everything could have gone straight to Hell. And honestly, regardless of whether you showed up or not, I would have spent a few months on the Station making sure everything was running smoothly before we started any robberies again. So technically, we still haven’t officially outed ourselves as criminals to the wider world yet.”

Henry nodded. “That’s good!” he commented with a sigh of relief. “That means that what I have in mind actually has a chance of working. Cause if we’d already started launching raids all over the world then there’s no way the Government would ever want to work with us.”

“Hold up, hold up, hold up!” Mr. Macbeth interrupted. “You said that you wanted us to start working legally without giving up all of the stuff we’ve collected over.”

“How are you going to do that?” Sven questioned. “Even if the Government is willing to negotiate, they’re going to demand that we give up all of the money we’ve stolen.”

Henry’s lips stretched into a smile. “Not if we pay it back to them in other ways,” he answered smoothly.

“You have a plan, don’t you?” Ellie asked with a smile of her own. “Let’s hear it.”

“It’s actually a pretty complicated one,” Henry replied, “and it’s based on a lot of the timelines that I’ve been through myself. Let me start with the big one, and the main reason why we’ll be able to keep our money in the first place. He got up from the chair and moved towards Sven, gesturing towards the laptop. Sven handed it to him, and Henry highlighted and enlarged one of the many endings.

“Stickmin Space Resort?” Ahnoldt read in confusion. “Wat is dat even?”

“That was a timeline where I went my own way without joining either the Government or the Toppats,” Henry explained. “One where I stole the Romanian Ruby from under your noises and made my escape in the chaos that followed. I also didn’t meet Ellie at all. Instead, I busted out of the Wall by myself and faked my own death, so nobody saw me coming.” He couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Outside of the missions with Charles and Ellie, that was probably one of my favorite timelines. I pretty much went ham in that one, stole the Toppat Clan’s space station, and actually converted it into the world’s first space hotel.”

“You WHAT?” Carol exclaimed. “HOW? You have to be talking out of your ass!”

Henry shrugged. “It sounds crazy, sure, but it’s what happened.”

“And the Toppats on the space station just…let that happen?” Sven asked incredulously. “They reformed, just like that?”

“They did,” Henry affirmed, “something that surprised even me. The Toppats on the space station were honestly on board with the whole thing. I told them how we had a unique opportunity to do something that nobody else had ever done before: make humanity’s first hotel in space. Forget stealing riches and plundering treasures. THIS is something that would make the Toppat Clan’s name known forever, even if it the place itself was called the Stickmin Space Resort.” Henry shrugged. “I honestly couldn’t care less what you called it, to be honest. I just wanted to make a hotel in space, and I did. Heck, the Government was more than happy to get off my back once they realized that I had pretty much neutralized the Toppat Clan as a criminal organization, even if unintentionally.”

The looks on the Toppat elites’ faces could best be described as conflicted. On the one hand, they were both stunned with disbelief and outraged that one lone upstart with seemingly no real credentials had managed to steal their greatest accomplishment and defeat the Toppat Clan when even the Government couldn’t…

…but on the other hand, they could certainly see the merit in Henry’s actions. Being the owners and creators of the world’s first space hotel would certainly immortalize the Toppat Clan name, and in a way that would command awe and admiration rather than dread. And any businessperson worth their salt could see the sheer amount of money one could make from this idea if executed correctly.

“It wouldn’t honestly be that hard to get it done,” Henry continued eagerly, remembering the fun times he had enjoyed from that timeline. We have teleportation beams, so we don’t have to worry all that much about transporting people from Earth to here. And all we need to do is just adjust some of the rooms so that guests can sleep in them instead!”

“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself,” Mr. Macbeth cut him off. “Look, I’m not saying your idea is an awful one. Hell, I’ll admit it’s creative. But you only had half the Clan in the Space Station. Now you have all of us here. There isn’t going to be enough room.”

Ellie knocked on the table to get his attention. “That can be solved,” she explained calmly. “If we’re going to make this idea work, then we’re gonna have to have some operatives on the ground. A few Clan members to greet guests, work with the Government, make sure that anything we do on Earth keeps running smoothly, things like that. And to make sure the Clan survives in case…well…” she trailed off as a flicker of dread appeared in Henry’s face, almost certainly due to the unpleasant experiences he had faced in different timelines. To his credit, the fear passed quickly.

“And if there are less rooms to house guests,” Albert remarked, “then that means we can just charge more. For the exclusivity and the rare opportunity to live a full night in space.”

“But that’s not all,” Henry interrupted, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “The Space Station that I made back in that timeline was just a resort, nothing more. But what if we made it into a casino? The first casino to ever exist in space?”

If the Toppat elites weren’t interested in the idea already, they most certainly were. “Okay, NOW we’re talking,” Sven commented with a grin on his face. “THAT’s something I could get behind.”

Ellie nodded thoughtfully. “Yes…” she mused, “if we managed to open up a successful casino that drew in countless people, we wouldn’t even need to charge all that much for a hotel room here. People would flock to us, spending their money on the many different games that we have to offer. And wasting all of it, filling us up with their riches,” she added with a smirk.

“We wouldn’t even need to cheat or rob them,” Carol mused. “Just make sure that the games we play offer us roughly the same house advantage as the games in Las Vegas. The house always wins, after all.”

“It might be slower going,” Henry commented, “but it would still make us incredibly rich in the long run. And since this money was gained legally, the Government couldn’t do anything about it even if they wanted to. Hell, if somebody was caught trying to steal from our casino, the Government would have to work FOR us in capturing the criminal.”

The Toppats all smirked at the idea of getting the Government to do something for them instead of against them. “So what kind of games would we be offering?”

“The same that any casino worth its salt would,” Ellie answered. Though she tried her best to keep her face neutral, everyone could see the excitement in her eyes. “Blackjack, craps, roulette, slots, poker, you name it, we’ll have it. We’d make a casino the envy of Vegas itself, and it would all be under the name of the Toppat Clan!”

“All right, I can get behind this idea. But there’s still a few big problems we need to worry about,” Mr. Macbeth interrupted with the humorless expression that he was known for. “The big one being, how the fuck are you going to smooth our relationship with the Government, hmm? There’s no way the Government is just gonna accept that we’ve turned over a new leaf,” he put the phrase in air-quotes, “and let us alone to do our own thing.”

Henry shook his head. “I’d actually disagree,” he countered. “Right now, you guys are in a massive position of power over the Government. While it is true that General Galeforce could eventually develop ways to attack the Space Station in the air, that’s not going to be for several months. He’d be expecting mass raids like nothing he’s ever had to deal with before, AND he’s assuming that Reginald and Right Hand Man are still in charge.” He looked over at Ellie. “Galeforce might have you on his radar, but when it comes to how you run the Toppat Clan he has no idea what to expect. The last thing he’d expect you to do is open up negotiations and offer an olive branch.”

“I can see where you’re coming from, Stickmin, but there’s still a couple of problems. The biggest one is why would General Galeforce want to negotiate with us? He has no reason whatsoever to believe that we’ve turned over a new leaf. He’d suspect a trap, and I couldn’t even blame him for that,” Carol pointed out.

Henry smiled. “Not if we offer up a bargaining chip,” he replied calmly. “Something huge. Something so immense that he’d have no choice but to consider that we’re telling the truth.”

Ellie’s eyes widened in realization. “You’re talking about the Tunisian Diamond,” she breathed.

Henry nodded. “Yep,” he confirmed.

The redheaded leader of the Toppat Clan folded her arms and shook her head. “No way, Henry,” she retorted, some of her old hostility returning. “You gave that to me as a show of good faith to prove that you didn’t want to betray me at the Wall unless you had to. And now you’re asking me to give it up?” she demanded with a hiss in her voice.

Henry raised his hand in a conciliatory gesture. “I’d never just ask you to give up the Tunisian Diamond out of the blue,” he promised. “Not unless I could offer you a replacement that’s just as valuable.”

“What are you…” understanding flashed in Ellie’s eyes, “OH.”

“I did a little research during some of those timelines I went through. Which means that as of now, I am currently the ONLY person on Earth who knows where the Norwegian Emerald is. I know where it was found, and by whom. And I know that you guys would eventually try and steal it later on down the road.”

“But if we found the Norwegian Emerald first, then it would truly be ours and ours alone,” Albert finished the thought with a grin. “It would be a treasure that we would have claimed legitimately, and there’s not a single thing that anybody could do about it. Not even the Government.”

“Not to mention the fact that if it was known that the Norwegian Emerald was in the Toppat Space Station, that might demotivate against attacks on the Station itself,” Sven added. “Nobody would want to see such a valuable treasure destroyed.”

“And as for the Tunisian Diamond,” Henry pointed out. “I know that Gene Fredrickson had plans to steal it, but he wasn’t a part of the Toppat Clan back then, and neither was I. The Toppat Clan technically had nothing to do with the theft of the Diamond, so they can’t blame you for it.”

“Offering the Government back the Tunisian Diamond would be a hell of a power play and a peace offering at the same time for negotiations,” Ellie admitted, before her expression hardened again. “That being said, I’m only going to consider that idea AFTER we find and claim the Norwegian Emerald first.”

“That’s completely fine,” Henry agreed. “I’ll give you everything I know about the Norwegian Emerald before we wrap up here.”

“All right, back to the idea of negotiating with the Government,” Carol continued where she had left off. “Giving them back the Tunisian Diamond isn’t a bad start, but I have a feeling it won’t be enough. The Government still thinks that we’ve stolen a hell of a lot of money and other things, and it won’t just let us get away with keeping all of them. And I can tell you right here and now that none of us are just going to hand over most of our wealth, especially since we’re already going to be using a good chunk of it to build up this casino idea of yours, assuming we go along with it in the first place.” Her declaration was met with loud vocalizations of approval and agreement from the other Toppat elites.

Henry only smiled in response. “Don’t you worry, Carol,” he assured her, “I have a plan for that too. And this one is based on another one of the timelines I did.” He picked another timeline written down on the laptop, highlighted it, and enlarged it. “Master Bounty Hunter.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not gonna be too pleased with this one?” Mr. Macbeth grumbled.

“That’s because you probably won’t be,” Henry admitted. “This was a timeline in which I hunted Reginald down like in this one, but instead of siding with the Toppats I handed him over to the Government. Reginald was arrested, and Right Hand Man took charge of the clan. This was also a timeline in which I got rescued by Charles from the Wall, and I was given a special mission to bring Right Man Hand in, dead or alive.”

Mr. Macbeth’s scowl deepened. “I’m guessing you succeeded in that,” he muttered. Neither he nor the other Toppats looked all too pleased with the idea of Henry taking down and probably killing one of the most respected leaders of the Clan. He took Henry’s silence as an admission. “Can you get to the point already?” he demanded.

“I learned something very interesting in that timeline,” Henry explained. “The Government has a lot of bounties set up for criminals. Criminals that are either really high-profile like the Right Hand Man and leaders of other criminal organizations, or criminals that are far, FAR worse than you guys. And I’m talking about sociopaths and depraved assholes that anybody with a basic shred of decency would hate. And those bounty rewards,” he whistled, “they’re worth a hell of a lot if you can take them down. Dead or alive.”

“…I see what you’re saying,” Ellie acknowledged. “You’re suggesting that we pay what we’ve stolen back to the Government not with the money we already have, but by taking care of their bounties without payment.”

“That could work,” Sven mused. “Getting rid of other problems the Government has to deal with would certainly help to smooth relationships between us, and it would also give the Toppat Clan members who prefer to engage in combat and launch raids something that they could do in place of criminal activities.”

Albert smirked. “Not to mention the fact that it would stop any potential rivals from taking our place, with the backing of the Government, no less,” he commented. “Even if we’re not going criminal anymore, we’re still the Toppat Clan. The best of the best. If we’re stepping down as the top criminal organization around, it is only proper that we ensure that no one can take our place.”

“All right, that does address those problems,” Carol gave Henry an appraising look. “You’ve actually thought this plan through, haven’t you?” The brunette woman gave him a nod of grudging respect. “Not bad.”

“It sounds like we have a lot of our bases covered,” Ellie mused. “But that leaves at least one other problem I can think of.” She looked over at Henry. “Opening up negotiations with General Galeforce would be a lot less of a pain in the ass if we had a good middle man in between us and the Government that both sides could at least trust a little. But we don’t have anyone like that.”

“You have me,” Henry suggested.

Mr. Macbeth scoffed. “Did you forget?” he retorted. “You betrayed the Government when you accepted Reginald’s surrender. They probably hate you more than they hate us.”

“Not if I present myself as a deep cover agent,” Henry countered. “I could explain that even if I captured Reginald, I still didn’t have any evidence to incriminate the Toppat Clan as a whole, or that I didn’t have any idea what they were planning. And my deep cover was effective enough that I was able to rise through the ranks of the Toppat Clan and find out more about their plans, but before I could report back I was thrown into the Wall and then later Ellie took over, discovering my status as a double agent for the Government. And when I confessed what my plans were for the Toppat Clan, they actually liked what I had in mind enough that they decided to use those plans for themselves and spared my life.”

Ellie shook her head. “Galeforce is never going to buy that story,” she contested. “As much as I like the idea of you being the middle man between us, there’s no way Galeforce will take you word for it.”

Henry took a deep breath and sighed. “I can think of one way,” he murmured. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it any more than I do…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And that’s a good place to end, I think. Henry’s unveiled his plan to make the Toppat Clan move away from its criminal ways while at the same time maintaining its wealth, resources, and fame. He’s drawn upon multiple timelines and endings that he’s experienced, including “Stickmin Space Resort,” “Master Bounty Hunter,” and even a bit of “Jewel Baron.” Alone, these might not have been enough to convince either the Toppat Clan or the Government. But together…Henry’s multilayered plan just might work.
> 
> As for what he’ll do to convince the Government of his “deep cover” status…that will be addressed next chapter. And neither he nor Ellie are going to like it…
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed!


	9. Negotiations with Galeforce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, Henry has outlined his plan to the Toppat Clan, and together they now have a plan to “go legal” while still maintaining most of the wealth and riches that they’ve collected so long. A plan to not only negotiate with their long time enemy General Galeforce, but also subvert the timelines established by the Entity and forge their own ending. It’s time to see just how Galeforce reacts to this “new” Toppat Clan…

“Any reports on the activities of the Toppat Clan?”

“None to speak of, General. Ever since they’ve launched their rocket into space, they have done nothing,” a soldier reported back.

Galeforce sighed. “Thank you, soldier. You are dismissed.”

The soldier snapped a salute smartly and left the room. Galeforce sighed and slumped down into his desk, shaking his head in bemusement.

“Are you all right, General?” Charles asked, his voice filled with concern.

“I don’t know,” Galeforce admitted, as he rubbed his forehead with his hands. “The Toppat Clan’s actions, or rather lack of action, is something I just can’t understand.”

Charles sat down on the chair opposite the General’s desk. Normally such an action would have been considered insubordinate, but despite his humble rank the pilot was one of Galeforce’s most valued and trusted members. And despite the fact that he could be rather airheaded at times, Charles could be trusted to keep valuable and confidential information to himself.

“All of our actions against the Toppat Clan have failed,” Galeforce explained. “We sent Henry after the Toppats, only for him to betray us and join them instead. And when we attempted to stop the launch of their Space Station, their defenses against the launch site were so strong that I couldn’t justify an invasion, not when it would have cost so many lives.”

“They’ve really got us good, haven’t they?” Charles asked with rare seriousness in his voice.

Galeforce nodded. “We could _potentially_ come up with ways to attack their Space Station later on down the road, but for now they have all of the cards. I would have expected them to launch raids and criminal activities at an unprecedented level, but instead they’ve done nothing. No crimes, no robberies, no attacks. They’ve just been staying up in that Space Station doing God knows what. I can’t understand any of it, and that’s what worries me.”

“Do we know anything new about the Toppat Clan?” Charles suggested.

Galeforce thought for a moment. “Yes, actually,” he mused. “They’ve gone through dramatic changes in leadership over the past few months. At first, Henry was the one who took command of the Clan, but nowadays it’s squarely under the command of a different person entirely. One Ellie Rose.”

Charles scratched his head. “I’ve…never heard of her,” he replied, confused. “Do we know anything about her?”

Galeforce shook his head. “Not much,” he admitted. “As far as we know, she’s a mostly independent criminal with a couple of connections. She’s committed a few crimes here and there, but nothing too noteworthy. She certainly had no direct connection to the Toppat Clan, which makes her sudden leadership of the Clan all the more baffling.” He frowned. “From what our sources can gather, Ellie Rose has been leading the Clan with ruthless efficiency, forcing a new level of organization and discipline to the Clan’s dealings. I have little doubt that her leadership is at least part of the reason why the Clan was prepared to defend against our potential invasion at the launch site.”

Charles raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that kind of leader be even worse for us than someone like Reginald or Right Hand Man?” he wondered. “Not that they weren’t good leaders either, but I thought they were more easygoing.”

Galeforce nodded. “Exactly,” he confirmed, “which makes their lack of attacks, raids, and crimes all the more confusing. If what we’ve heard about Ellie is true, I would have expected a far greater number of attacks, all of them more vicious and difficult to deal with than anything we’ve had to deal with when Reginald Copperbottom was in charge. In fact, apart from launching a rocket from the jungle, something that’s a legal gray area that would be a major pain to bring up in court, we still technically have no evidence that confirms that the Toppat Clan has the criminal record that we know they have.”

Charles opened his mouth to say something, when Rupert Price rushed into the room, a look of shock and disbelief on his face.

Galeforce snapped his attention onto Rupert. “What is it?” he demanded, not pleased that someone had simply barged into a room where sensitive information was being discussed.

“It’s the Toppat Clan leadership,” Rupert explained, clearly out of breath. “She’s made contact with us…and is asking to speak with you directly.”

“What?” Galeforce spluttered incredulously. “What do you mean?”

“All they said was that they were willing to…open negotiations, under certain conditions,” the soldier answered mysteriously.

“What conditions?” Galeforce asked.

“The one condition they demanded above all else is that the conversation is off the record,” Rupert explained. “If they even think that you’re recording, then they’ll cut off any and all negotiations.”

The ominous way he spoke that left little doubt as to what the consequences would be if the Toppat Clan “cut off negotiations.” As much as he hated to admit it, what he had just told Charles still held true. The Toppat Clan currently had an insurmountable advantage over them, and they could easily launch an unprecedented blitz of criminal raids if they so choose. The fact that they were offering to negotiate in the first place was genuinely surprising and gave him just a tad bit of hope, since they had no reason whatsoever to deceive them and Ellie didn’t seem like the type of person to toy around and waste people’s time. Still, he wasn’t going to get optimistic just yet, especially with how badly the Government’s operations against the Toppat Clan had gone up until now.

“How am I supposed to communicate with the Toppat Clan?” Galeforce asked.

“They connected to us through one of our laptops,” Rupert explained. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I think they might have a spy or two in our midst.”

Galeforce groaned. “Why am I not surprised,” he muttered. “Okay, bring in the laptop. I hate to concede anything to the Toppat Clan, but follow their demands. Don’t record or do anything that might cause them to break whatever diplomacy they’re doing.”

Rupert nodded and left the room. A few moments later, he returned carrying the laptop in tow. The soldier gently placed the laptop on Galeforce’s desk and put the plug in the wall. The general curtly nodded at both Charles and Rupert, signaling to them that it was time to leave. Once they were gone, the General closed the door and locked it. Then, with a sigh, he sat back down and turned the laptop to face him.

On the opposite screen, Galeforce could see a red-headed woman gazing coolly back at him, immediately recognizing Ellie Rose. In the back of his mind, he wondered how this seemingly unaffiliated criminal woman had suddenly jumped to the ranks of the Toppats and taken that mantle from Henry, even though there was no way he would ever find out.

“Hello there,” Ellie greeted him evenly, her tone polite but not particularly friendly either. “I assume that that soldier told you about the conditions?”

Galeforce nodded. “There is nothing being recorded,” he promised. “This is strictly off-the-record.”

“Good,” Ellie nodded, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I want you to understand something, General. We are in a vastly superior position compared to you. I have spent the last month in space organizing and training the Toppat Clan’s forces. If we wanted to, we could begin a blitz of raids and operations that would leave you completely helpless to stop us.”

“Are you just here to gloat?” Galeforce growled.

“No, this is me stating facts and making it clear where things stand,” Ellie replied, her face just as impassive as ever. “So that you know that the olive branch that I’m about to offer you is completely genuine.”

“I don’t suppose you’re here to offer your surrender to the forces of justice?” the General couldn’t help but deadpan.

A faint smirk appeared on Ellie’s face, one that vanished just as quickly as it arrived. “We both know that isn’t going to be the case, General,” her tone was equally as dry. “And if you still doubt my generosity, you should be grateful that we didn’t execute the spy that we found deep in our ranks.”

Galeforce raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t sent any spies to infiltrate the Toppat Clan. “Wha…”

“Don’t play me for a fool, General,” Ellie cut him off. “Your spy actually did incredibly well, I’ll give him that. He managed to not only make his way into our ranks without us suspecting a thing for such a long time, but actually climbed all the way to the top. But I figured out what he was planning, and we saw him what he truly was.” She turned to face some unseen individual. “Bring in the prisoner!” she barked out.

Galeforce, in the meantime, was trying to think about who could have possibly infiltrated the Toppat Clan on their own initiative, seemingly on the Government’s behalf, no less. Then, what Ellie had spoken rang in his head, and his eyes widened. “Wait a minute,” he gasped. “You can’t mean…”

He fell into stunned silence as he saw two Toppats bring in a prisoner. A man who had been badly beaten, but not to the point that his injuries were severe or permanently crippling. A face that he had hoped to never see again after his betrayal, and was the last thing he had expected to see. “Stickmin?” he gasped.

Ellie smirked at him. “I have to admire him, to a degree,” she remarked. “He was certainly no slouch at pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. But everyone’s luck runs out in the end, and Stickmin’s no different.”

“I’m sorry, General…” Stickmin gasped out, clearly in pain. One of his beatings must have been fairly recent. “I tried to go into deep cover…”

“…Why, Henry?” was all Galeforce could say in response. “Why would you do this? I didn’t give you any such orders. All you had to do was find information or capture a Toppat leader, not…this…”

“Because even if I’d captured Reginald, I still didn’t have to find any evidence that the Toppat Clan was doing anything wrong,” Henry explained, wincing as one of his older wounds ached for a second. “I had no idea what they were planning. So I decided to try and infiltrate the Toppat Clan to try and see what they were going to do. I didn’t expect to be the leader of the Clan, and I thought that maybe I could try and influence the Clan by being its leader.”

“He also found out about the Space Station while he was leader,” Ellie added. “But before he could report back to you, he was captured by the Wall. I followed him out when he escaped and all the way back to the Toppat Clan’s airship.” Her lips curled into a smirk. “I realized something was wrong with Stickmin and I outed him as a spy to the rest of the Clan. He actually managed to take out both Reginald and Right Hand Man before he surrendered and we captured him. Since I was the one who exposed him, I was given leadership of the Clan.”

General Galeforce thought about what Ellie had said. There was something off about her statements, something he couldn’t put a finger on. But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was. Eventually, he shook his head. Lies or not, the Toppat Clan still had the advantage over him either way.

“If that’s the case,” Galeforce questioned, “why haven’t you killed him already?”

There was a scoff behind Ellie, and the redhaired woman moved slightly to reveal Albert Poshley, one of the elites of the Toppat Clan. “Do you really think that we would be so savage as to wantonly murder those put down their arms and submit to us? We are not barbarians.”

“Besides,” Ellie added, “we needed to know exactly what Henry was doing snooping around our Clan for the Government, and what exactly he had planned for the Clan. Of course, some of our members weren’t very happy with Reginald’s and Right Hand Man’s death, and took their frustrations out on him. But I made sure they didn’t go far. I needed him beaten down, but not broken. Which leads to the other reason why we spared his life.”

“…and that is?” General Galeforce prompted.

Amusement appeared in Ellie’s eyes. “Because we were surprised by Stickmin’s plan,” she explained. “Pleasantly so.”

“I was in a unique position as leader of the Toppat Clan,” Henry explained. “And I wanted to find a way to phase the Clan away from criminal activities, and more towards legal operations and business. I was working to gain the Toppat Clan’s trust as its leader, and I actually think I was getting somewhere too.”

“Until we exposed him,” Ellie finished with a grin. “But still…just because Stickmin here was working for the enemy, doesn’t mean that his ideas were necessarily bad or wrong. In fact, we were all quite impressed, so much so that I ordered the Clan to stop beating him in his jail cell and actually shared my findings with the rest of the Elites.”

“And what exactly _is_ that plan?” the General couldn’t resist asking. If it was enough for the Toppats to seriously consider giving up their criminal ways, he very much wanted to know, as much as he hated to admit it.

“Henry had plans to convert the Toppat Space Station into the world’s first hotel and casino in space,” Ellie explained. “An idea that, if carried out properly, could give us a fresh, large, and more importantly _consistent_ stream of wealth even beyond what we could achieve through our…normal means. Not to mention that it would set the Toppat Clan’s place in history for all time.” She smirked. “Would certainly beat having to deal with us every waking moment, wouldn’t it, General?”

Galeforce sat in silence, processing Ellie’s words in his mind. When he had heard Ellie talk about moving the Toppat Clan into legitimate business instead of criminal activity, he had been wondering what sort of business could generate the same kind of revenue. A casino certainly would make sense for someone like the Toppats…with the house advantage of a casino and the allure of being able to visit space itself, Ellie was right. The money would come flooding in, and they wouldn’t need to cheat or even set exorbitantly high prices for it.

Still, even if the Toppats were interested in turning to legitimate business now, that didn’t change the fact that they were still one of the world’s most powerful criminal organizations. No matter how much easier his life would be if he didn’t have to deal with the Toppats, his conscience would never allow him to simply ignore their criminal record, even if he technically had no proof that they existed. “And what about all the crimes you’ve committed?” Galeforce challenged. “You really think I’m going to just ignore them and let you do what you want?”

Ellie snickered. “You wouldn’t have much of a choice if it came down to it, General, considering how much of an advantage we have,” she retorted, before calming herself and adopting a…friendlier…smile than what she’d been giving him so far. “But I understand. You want reassurance that we’re serious about going legit. I can give that to you.”

“I’m listening.” It didn’t hurt to simply hear her out, after all.

“Henry’s plan, which I’ve taken for my own, has a few steps planned out for us to slowly repay what we have taken, while still maintaining the vast wealth we have collected,” Ellie explained. “The idea is that when we have our casino up and running, we will be giving the Government a percentage of the profits. We will do this over a given period of time, until we have effectively repaid what we have stolen, at least in the monetary sense.” Ellie couldn’t help but smile at the sheer amount of profit Henry’s plan would give the Toppat Clan. “With how much money we’ll be getting from this business venture, we’ll have plenty of cash to spare and then some. I can assure you that I will not be insulting you with mere trickles of cash,” she assured him. “As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in wasting time.”

Galeforce could see the logic behind the plan. It gave the Toppats complete control over how much and how quickly they would be willing to give the Government at a time, but assuming that the Toppats were being honest, it wasn’t the worst offer they could have given him.

Still, he wasn’t just going to give in that easily. “You say that you’ll pay off what you’ve taken to us in the future,” he challenged. “But what about now? Your entire plan depends on whether or not you manage to pull this off, and who knows how long that’ll take even if you succeed. I’d be a lot more comfortable accepting your offer if you had a plan for the here and now.”

Ellie smiled in response. “I figured you’d say that,” she answered without missing a beat, “which is why we’ll be offering you our services as bounty hunters.” Seeing the look of surprise on Galeforce’s face, Ellie continued. “Stickmin told us something quite interesting while we were interrogating him. He mentioned how you have a whole list of bounties that you have on a bunch of criminals, a ton of money that you’ll pay for criminals that are just as bad as we are if not worse. If you’re looking for us to pay what we’ve taken back here and now, I’m offering you the services of the Toppat Clan as bounty hunters.”

“You’d help us take down other criminals?” Galeforce asked incredulously.

Ellie nodded. “But of course. We may have plans to go legit, but we’re still the Toppat Clan. If we’re stepping down from being the greatest criminal organization on Earth, we’re going to make damn sure that _nobody_ takes our place. We take care of the criminals, and you keep most of the reward. We’ll take about 10% just to keep an extra supply of money until we can get the casino going, and you can keep the other 90% as part of the whole repayment thing. I think that’s more than fair, wouldn’t you agree?” she finished with a raised eyebrow.

Galeforce had to admit, he was impressed. Henry and the Toppats had really thought this whole thing out. And the percentages Ellie was offering weren’t bad in the slightest. “How do I know that the Toppats you send to work for us won’t stab us in the back?” he demanded.

“I give you my word as the leader of the Toppat Clan that any member of the Clan who betrays the trust of the Government during these bounty missions will be banished from the Clan and left to your justice,” Ellie promised solemnly, and Galeforce could see the honesty in her eyes. “Our Toppats may choose to work by themselves or work alongside you as part of your military. We may not always work by your side, but I speak for the Clan as a whole when I say that we will not work against you.”

Galeforce pondered Ellie’s words and offer. He could certainly see the advantages of having the Toppat Clan as allies in capturing bounties, especially since he knew firsthand just how skilled and organized they could be as a fighting force. And even though that “off” feeling from before was still there, his instincts overall were telling him that he could trust Ellie’s word. He just had to make sure that he used the Toppats sent to aid him wisely and never become overly dependent on them. Even if Ellie had given him her word that the bounty hunter team she sent him wouldn’t betray the Government, that didn’t mean that he could control their actions or even necessarily coordinate with them effectively.

The General had to admit that he was surprised by Ellie. So far, her proposals had been reasonable and something that he could potentially agree to without feeling like he was selling out on his principles and morals. Granted, part of him still disdained the idea of working with the Toppat Clan at all, but he knew that he was already at a huge disadvantage against them from the start. And if the Toppats DID go back to their current ways and start launching raids from space, there would be practically nothing he could do at least for several months. But there was still one thing that bothered him and kept him from accepting Ellie’s offer. “I’ve heard a lot of words,” he declared, giving Ellie a steely look. “I have to admit that your proposal has my attention. But I can only trust words so much, Miss Rose. Do you have any action to back them up?”

Ellie didn’t seem at all fazed by Galeforce’s reluctance to accept her word so readily. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied calmly. “As a show of good faith, I am ready to offer _this_ to you.” She stepped back from the camera a bit, and Galeforce’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

Sitting on the table, on a small pedestal, was the Tunisian Diamond.

“I thought Henry stole that Diamond…” was all that he could say dumbly. After Henry had seemingly backstabbed them when he had gone in his deep cover mission, he was fairly certain that he’d never see the Diamond again. To see it in front of him right now was nothing less than shocking.

“You remember correctly,” Ellie replied smoothly. “But we forced him to give up the Diamond during one of our…interrogations.” Galeforce winced at the implication behind the word. “We weren’t the ones to steal it, but we’re more than happy to get our hands on it. Still, as a show of good faith and to prove that we’re serious about going legit, I am willing to return it to you.”

Galeforce shook his head, still trying to process the fact that not only was he seeing a treasure that he’d thought would be lost forever, but that the Toppat Clan of all people were the ones who were offering to return it to him. He briefly wondered if this was a trick, if Ellie was offering the Diamond only to steal it from him later. Once again, however, his instincts were conflicted on the matter. On the one hand, he didn’t detect any deceit from Ellie. But on the other hand, he had the distinct feeling that Ellie wasn’t telling him something. But what that one thing could be, he had no idea.

He would have to tread extremely carefully around this offer. Have at least 2 jewel experts inspect the Tunisian Diamond to confirm it was real, and then make sure it protected much more thoroughly than it had ever been in the past. He wasn’t leaving anything to chance when it came to the Toppat Clan.

“If you really are offering the Tunisian Diamond back to us,” Galeforce warned, “you do realize that we’ll be taking many, many steps to maximize security and make sure this isn’t a trick.”

“You’d be a fool not to,” Ellie conceded without missing a beat. “I don’t have a problem with anything you want to do to secure the Diamond once we deliver it to you.”

“Mhm…” Galeforce nodded, the movement barely perceptible. He affixed Ellie with a stern look. “This has been…quite the surprising day, to say the least,” the man declared. “Normally I would be very hesitant to deal with criminals, but in this case I know that I can’t hope to beat you by force. I won’t say yes or no to your offer right now, but if what you’re saying is true, then I’m open to discussing this further later on down the road. But for now, I have a condition of my own.”

“And what would that be?” Ellie wondered aloud. “Be aware that you are in no position to make demands of us.”

“It’s quite simple,” Galeforce answered. “I want Henry to be placed among your group of Toppat elites.”

“WHAT?” Ellie exclaimed. “And why should we agree to that?”

“It’s simple,” Galeforce replied. “If he was indeed a deep cover spy working for us, then Henry is the only person currently in that Space Station that I have any reason to trust. I want him to attend your meetings and give me regular updates on your activities.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless you have something to hide?”

Ellie grumbled something unintelligible under her breath. “…fine,” she reluctantly conceded. “We’ll allow Stickmin to attend our meetings and communicate with you regularly. I hope for your sake that he continues to be helpful with our plans…and that we don’t catch him snooping around where he doesn’t belong,” she warned.

“Then that is all I have to say for now,” the General concluded. “I’ll discuss your offer with some of our colleagues and then we’ll discuss your offer again at a later date.”

“That’s fine by me,” Ellie agreed. “But I would advise that you do not take too long. I’ve done you the courtesy of not wasting your time, and I would appreciate you not wasting mine. I will communicate with you when I want to speak with you again.”

With that, Ellie cut the connection. She turned to face Henry…and both of them burst out laughing.

“Oh my God,” Ellie said in between laughs. “I can’t believe he bought that so easily!”

“I mean, most of what you said WAS the truth,” Henry pointed out, though he was just as amused as his former enemy.

“I know,” the redhead agreed, “but that story about you being a deep cover agent? I could have smelled that lie from a mile away!”

“To be fair, I _do_ look pretty beaten up,” Henry defended. Even now, he still felt respect for the old general who had been reasonable and even kind to him in the timelines where he had served the Government. “I don’t think he would have bought my story nearly as much if we hadn’t done that first.”

Ellie sobered slightly. “I’m sorry about that,” she muttered. When Henry had revealed his plan to convince Galeforce, he had insisted that some of the Toppats beat him up to give the appearance of a captured enemy and prison. This punishment had once been one of Ellie’s greatest desires, but now that she knew the truth about Henry doing this to him only felt so empty and wrong. The fact that Henry had insisted on it, as well as his claim that he had suffered far worse throughout his many timelines and fails, didn’t make her feel any better in the slightest.

Still, as much as she hated having to give the order, Ellie at least felt a little reassurance that it had been done for a reason, and that the gambit had paid off.

“Well, we got the hardest part out of the way,” Henry remarked. “I thought we were gonna have a hard time explaining how I was sitting at the same table as the other Toppat Clan elites to the General.” His mouth stretched into a grin. “Turns out, he did the job for us!”

“I know, right?” Ellie snickered for a bit more, before suddenly adopting a business-like expression on her face. “Okay, Henry. We’ve gotten Galeforce’s interest, and he might actually agree to your plan. Now what?”

“Now we fill in the rest of the Clan,” Henry answered. “If one of the Clan ends up accidentally revealing a possible different story to a Government member, they’re going to be a lot more suspicious.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “I think I might have to tell them the whole truth if I’m going to get them to trust me.”

Ellie nodded, understanding why he was hesitant to do so. His story had been unbelievable to her at first, and it had taken specific evidence and many revelations to convince her. She had little doubts that there would be some Toppat Clan members who refused to believe Henry’s story, but as long as they didn’t try to pull anything she didn’t particularly care about their opinions.

“I’ll call a meeting of the Toppats in the dining room,” Ellie decided. “Better get this out of the way now.”

Henry nodded. He had always been a mostly solitary person, and giving big speeches to a ton of people was certainly not his idea of a fun time considering how little he spoke to begin with. But if he wanted their plan to work, he would need to regain the trust of the Toppats.

Besides…if there was one lesson that he had learned from the Entity, it was that nothing worth doing was easy…or free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And there you have it, guys! Ellie’s opened negotiations between the Toppats and the Government. Sorry if a lot of this seems to be a repeat of the last chapter, but I wanted to have it from Galeforce’s perspective and I hope I introduced enough elements to not make it a complete repeat. Normally, General Galeforce wouldn’t willingly deal with a criminal organization like the Toppats, but he knows full well that the Government is at a massive (and right now insurmountable) disadvantage compared to the Toppats. If the Toppats have everyone at their mercy with the Space Station, and yet are willing to negotiate and go legal instead, then Galeforce will certainly pay attention. Especially when Ellie’s terms are reasonable.  
> That’s all I really have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!


	10. Diamonds and Toppats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just out of curiosity, if I wrote a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers fanfic, would anybody read that? It would obviously come after both of my major fic projects are completed, but just throwing it out there.
> 
> I would like to thank you all for the continued love and support you have shown this fic! You guys are amazing and have really motivated me to keep on writing even with my other fic and my busy schedule taking up much of my time. I hope I keep producing quality content for you guys to enjoy.

**Government Base**

Galeforce looked out over the empty lot that he had ordered his soldiers to clear out. In only a few minutes, the Toppat Clan would be beaming down a few envoys to deliver the Tunisian Diamond to them. The general had insisted that he would be bringing 3 of the country’s most renowned jewel experts to verify that the Diamond they were offering was indeed the real deal, a demand that Ellie had surprisingly accepted with no argument. In return, Ellie had informed Galeforce that they would be delivering the Diamond and only staying around long enough for the experts to confirm its veracity before leaving. _Any_ attempt to capture or kill even a single one of their members would be considered an act of war, a threat that Galeforce had no doubt was completely serious.

He had no intentions of violating their agreement. Even if it didn’t go against his morals to spit on what could very well be a genuine show of good faith, it would be incredibly foolish to blatantly provoke them into going back to their criminal ways.

“So how long will it take for them to get here?” Charles asked. There was a small entourage waiting for them at the agreed rendezvous time: Galeforce, Charles, a few soldiers, and the group of 3 jewel experts taken from some of the country’s most famous museums.

Galeforce looked at his watch. “Should be any second now…” he mumbled. As if on cue, a brilliant beam of bluish light shown down from the sky, shooting down into the area that Galeforce designated. Figures began to manifest inside the beam, and after a few seconds the light cleared to reveal Henry, Ellie, a few Toppat Clan members, and a small safe that appeared large enough to hold the Tunisian Diamond.

“General,” Ellie greeted the man evenly.

“Miss Rose,” Galeforce returned without missing a beat. “I presume that the Diamond is in the safe?”

In response, Ellie wordlessly snapped her fingers, and one of the Toppats began opening the safe. He pulled the door open, revealing the Tunisian Diamond nesting comfortably on a small pillow, its brilliance shining even from within the safe’s walls. Two of the Toppats reached in and took out the Diamond, moving it from out of the safe and onto a table that had been specifically prepared to hold the Diamond on it.

The three jewel experts began to carefully study the Diamond, using various examination techniques and equipment to determine whether it was indeed real. After what seemed like an eternity, they looked up at the General. “It’s real, General,” one of them announced, the expression on his face disbelieving. “The Toppat Clan actually returned the Tunisian Diamond to us.”

“Is there anything on the Diamond that we should be worried about?” the General asked in response. “Bug devices or the like?”

“Nope,” the jewel expert shook his head. “It looks like the Diamond really is unaltered and untouched.”

“Then we’re good to go,” Galeforce declared, his expression a bit warmer and less hostile than it had been a second before. “I’m gonna be honest, before you offered to return the Diamond there was no way I was going to accept that you were telling the truth. But now…” he cracked a small smile. “Maybe the Toppat Clan really is ready to change its ways after all.”

Ellie’s own lips twitched into the faintest of smiles. “So long as you don’t cause us any problems, General, we won’t cause any for you.”

Galeforce nodded and looked over at Henry. Even now, he still didn’t really know what to think of the thief. He had been so utterly enraged when Henry had given into his own selfish nature, betraying them and throwing his lot in with the Toppats…but just like the Toppat Clan’s new leader, the man had not just surprised him, but completely thrown his expectations out of the window. Even then, if it had been Henry himself claiming that he had gone into deep cover for them, he probably would have dismissed his words as a pitiful excuse and a lie…but it had been Ellie who had made the claim, and he’d seen the bruises and injuries all over the man. “Keep an eye on things, Henry,” he informed him. “This is a very good start, but that doesn’t mean that I’m completely trusting the Toppats just yet.”

Henry nodded and wordlessly gave his former superior a thumbs-up.

Ellie scowled at the interaction. “I can’t say I’m all that happy with you forcing a known government agent into our elite committee, even though I can understand why you’re putting him there,” she commented dryly before her expression suddenly turned businesslike again. “And that’s all we’re here for.” She spoke into her radio. “Beam us up.”

The brilliant blue light shined down from the heavens again, covering all of the Toppats and dissolving them as they teleported back up into their Space Station. Once they were gone, Charles looked over uncertainly at the Tunisian Diamond still sitting on the table. The jewel experts were already preparing to move it away, giving the soldiers orders on how to transport it. “I still don’t get it,” the helicopter pilot admitted. “They’ve been stealing things for centuries, and yet they just completely hand over the real Tunisian Diamond to us, just like that?”

Galeforce nodded, understanding his protégé’s reservations. “I know how you feel, Charles,” he assured him. “It’s just as confusing to me too. When I first heard about Ellie Rose being the new leader of the Toppats and how she ran the organization from inside, I thought that we were going to deal with something even worse and more ruthless than before.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why she suddenly changed her mind, but assuming this isn’t a giant lie, then I’m not complaining.”

“Do you think the Toppats might try and steal the Diamond back?” Charles asked worriedly.

Galeforce shook his head. “Why bother, when they already have it? If they really wanted to keep going with their criminal ways, they could have just kept it and started launching all their raids as much as they wanted. Giving us the Diamond only to steal it back makes no sense at all. It would just be a giant waste of time and money for everyone, and barring that one Toppat Clan leader who nearly ran the Clan into the ground with his completely random and nonsense raids, the Toppat Clan generally aren’t known for being inefficient.” The General frowned. “Still, I feel like I’m missing something from all this,” he muttered, his eyes narrowed. “The Toppats might not be trying to steal the Diamond back or do criminal activities…but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some ulterior motive planned.”

**Meanwhile, back in the Toppat Space Station…**

“Well, we got that part taken care of,” Henry commented as they stepped out of the teleportation bay.

“Yep!” Ellie agreed. “You know, giving away the Tunisian Diamond back to Galeforce didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”

“I mean, the fact that I gave you a new jewel to replace it that’s equally as valuable probably has something to do with it,” Henry pointed out with a smirk. After they had finished finalizing their plans, one of the first things that Henry had done to prove the truth behind his words was to point out the location of the Norwegian Emerald. Once he had done so, Ellie made arrangements for the Toppat Clan to temporarily buy out and take over a mining company, paying them for their services just long enough to find the Emerald and claim it for their own. An investigation from the Toppat Clan’s own jewel expert quickly confirmed that the Norwegian Emerald was indeed a precious gem on the same level as the Tunisian Diamond, only slightly lower in value due to diamond’s innately higher worth over emerald. Still, the small offset in value was than made up for by the fact that, for the first time, the Toppat Clan truly owned one of the most precious gems in the entire world, and this time nobody could claim it from them no matter how much they wanted to.

Unlike the rest of the items that the Toppat Clan held, however, the Norwegian Emerald was NOT stored in the vault like most of the other items. Henry had insisted that the Toppat Clan keep the Norwegian Emerald in its own specific container. “Why the hell would you put the Norwegian Emerald, one of the most precious gems in the entire world, in a container where you could _eject it into space_ with a single button press?” he had demanded. “All it takes is one misclick, one single person either too confused or too tired to know what they’re doing, and congrats! You just ejected the Norwegian Emerald into space.”

Ellie was almost certain that Henry was speaking from personal experience, likely having accidentally ejected the Norwegian Emerald into space himself. It didn’t change the fact that his argument was both compelling and sensible, especially when there wasn’t really any valid argument against it. The redheaded woman certainly wasn’t going to open up the possibility for such a catastrophic and insanely idiotic mistake to happen on her watch, and had ordered the Emerald to be moved into a separate display case, one where it _couldn’t_ be ejected by accident, and had ordered it to be guarded carefully by multiple Toppats. If anybody was stupid enough to try and steal the Emerald for their own selfish game, they wouldn’t accomplish very much.

“Boss?” Henry’s and Ellie’s attention turned to one of the Toppats. “Our team is working on the Supreme Dominance to try and make it so that it doesn’t reflect stuff anymore.”

“And how’s that going?” she asked, her tone all business.

The Toppat rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Ehhh…we’re still experimenting,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of things we need to take care of. Replacing the material, replacing the energy type, things like that.”

“Keep working on it,” Ellie commanded. The Toppat saluted in acknowledgment and left. Once he was gone, she sighed. “I have no clue what the heck Reginald was thinking when he made that,” she admitted. “In theory, it sounds cool and all, making a giant laser that can blast anything to hell. But we both know just how easily that can go to shit.”

Henry scowled. “You mean the laser being reflected and cutting this station in half, or somebody shooting at it and causing it to overheat and explode?” he deadpanned. “Yeah, great options, those.”

“Kinda reminds me of the Death Star, to be honest,” Ellie remarked. “Putting all our eggs in one basket, and the Empire went to shit once it exploded.”

“Let’s NOT do that,” Henry commented back, and Ellie wasn’t going to argue with him there. In her mind, it would have been much more practical and effective to not go with the laser entirely, and instead implement a lot of smaller but still dangerous weapons systems spread out throughout the Station…assuming that the targeting was improved so that they actually hit, of course.

“Are you ready?” Ellie asked as they got into an elevator. “Convincing Galeforce might be one thing, but talking to all of the Toppats about why you’re back in the higher-ups is gonna be a whole ‘nother problem.”

Henry sighed. “I know,” he replied with resignation in his tone, “but we have to give them an explanation. Even if that explanation is…missing a couple of details.” The Toppat Clan elites all knew about Henry’s full story, of course, but they wouldn’t be able to share that story out to the rest of the Toppats. Ellie would be the first to admit that the only reason she believed Henry was because of all the evidence he had presented, both with regards to the potential dangers the Toppat Clan faced but also because of his intricate knowledge of her personal life and history. There was no way that they would convince all of the Toppat Clan if they told the full story; they would call them insane, and she couldn’t even blame them.

So instead, they were going to tell a watered-down version of the truth, with the fundamentals still correct but with some details removed and other…embellishments…added. It would still get the point across about Henry’s loyalties, and hopefully restore some of the respect he had amongst the Clan.

That being said, Ellie would never give up leadership of the Toppat Clan at this point. Even though Henry’s actions might have genuinely been for the best, his betrayal had still hurt her deeply and she had fought tooth and nail to escape the Wall and seize leadership of the Toppats from him. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like Henry had any interest in regaining leadership, though she’d continue to keep a watchful eye over him just in case. Trust was something that she had precious little of by her very nature, even if Henry might be one of the very few people worthy of regaining it after he had broken it.

“We’re here,” Ellie gestured towards the door. Henry pressed his hand on the pad and the door swung open, showing the dining hall where all of the Toppats ate their meals. Every single member of the Toppat Clan had been gathered in this once place by Ellie and the rest of the Toppat Clan leadership, in preparation for this important announcement. As soon as the Toppats saw who had arrived, the chatter amongst them began to slowly die down. What really shocked them all was the fact that Henry was standing by Ellie’s side, not as a prisoner but seemingly as a respected peer. Some of the Toppats looked at him with hostility, others with indifference and a few even with the respect that they had had for him when he was leader. Thomas Chestershire and Geoffrey Plumb were seated among the Toppats, and the two of them gave respectful nods and smiled to the man they had so loyally followed, though neither of them did anything further.

But all of them were curious. Why was Ellie allowing Henry by her side like this, when she had been so vitriolic and hateful to him earlier?

“May I have your attention please?” Ellie declared. Though her voice wasn’t overly harsh or loud, the hall quickly fell silent. Ellie had quickly established herself as a no-nonsense leader who didn’t take bullshit from anyone, and although her demeanor had gotten noticeably warmer (after Henry’s interrogation, oddly enough), she was still not someone you wanted to anger.

“I have an important announcement to make,” the redhaired young woman continued. “We have big plans prepared for the Toppat Clan. Plans that will take the Clan in a very different direction from what you might expect. But I have discussed this with the other elite members, and they have all agreed to follow this new path that we have planned. A path that, if we pull this off, will ensure not just the continued wealth and prestige of the Toppat Clan, but also secure its future for years to come.”

She gestured with her hand towards Henry Stickmin. “You may be wondering: why is Henry Stickmin here, standing next to me as though he were an elite? Shouldn’t he be rotting somewhere deep in our prisons, or being shoved into the airlock and ejected out into space?” She turned to face the crowd again. “I’ve interrogated Stickmin thoroughly, and as it turned out, his plans as leader of the Toppat Clan were far beyond what I could have expected. And I’ll let him speak for himself.” She gave the audience a glare. “I expect that you remain _silent_ and listen to what he has to say until he has finished,” her tone making it abundantly clear that she would _not_ take kindly to any interruptions.

Henry stepped forward as Ellie stepped back. He took a deep breath, swallowed once, and spoke. “I had several plans in mind,” he began the explanation that he and Ellie had worked on. “Plans that needed several months to be carried out, and also needed the Space Station to be launched first before I could really do anything about them. I wanted to take the Toppat Clan in a different direction, one that would let us keep our riches and wealth while also ensuring the Clan’s safety and survival for a long time to come. To put it simply, I wanted to make the Toppat Clan go legal.”

There was an immediate uproar. “You’re crazy!” one of the Toppats exclaimed.

“Why would we ever want to do that?” another Toppat demanded.

“What the hell are you thinking, Stickmin?” a third shouted.

A stormy look appeared on Ellie’s face. She grabbed her gun, pointed it into the ceiling, and shot a blank into the air. The loud crack of the gun immediately silenced the crowd, and the enraged look in her eyes as she glared at the Toppats caused many of them to shudder. In this particular moment, she looked every bit like the vengeful, hateful person she had been when she had been hunting down Henry. “I warned you not to interrupt him, didn’t I?” she asked with a deathly calm that belied her fury. A few of the Toppats frantically nodded. “Then I suggest you keep your mouths shut and don’t open it again until Henry’s finished,” she hissed, “or you won’t enjoy the consequences.”

Henry smiled at her gratefully. “Thanks, Ellie.” She curtly nodded in response and gestured for him to continue. He cleared his throat before continuing. “This wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment thing that I came up with just for a laugh. I put in a lot of time and effort to make a complex plan that will secure the Toppat Clan’s future.” He proceeded to describe the various facets of the plan in detail, the same plan that he had worked with the Toppat Clan elites to formulate. As he described his plans, the looks of scorn on the Toppats slowly started to fade. Some of them began nodding with approval or at the very least, with a few looking particularly excited at the idea. Others continued to be somewhat skeptical or dismissive, but none of them were openly contemptuous of the idea. “We’ve already carried out some of our plans,” Henry concluded. “I helped the Toppats to find the Norwegian Emerald, so that we could return the Tunisian Diamond to General Galeforce as a show of good faith while still keeping a super valuable jewel for ourselves.”

Some of the Toppats began applauding at this revelation. Even if Henry had accomplished nothing else, finding a precious jewel almost as valuable as the Tunisian Diamond and Romanian Ruby that they could have an uncontested claim on was a worthy accomplishment in and of itself.

“And now, I need to speak to the new Toppat leader, Miss Rose,” Henry turned to face Ellie, whose expression was carefully neutral. “You hunted me down and took leadership of the Toppat Clan away from me. And I don’t want blame for you for wanting to take revenge. Everything you said about me was true. I left you behind when you helped me. And I did that because you weren’t a member of the Toppat Clan, and I didn’t think that I owed you any loyalty back then.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “That was wrong of me, and I’m still kicking myself over it, and not just because it came back to bite me in the ass. You have every reason to hate me, and no reason to accept my apology. But I really am sorry for betraying you back at the Wall, and even though there’s a lot of bad blood between us, I’d like to ask that we put aside our difference for the good of the Toppat Clan.”

He extended a hand to Ellie, who pretended to consider extending her own and completing the handshake. Of course, Ellie had already forgiven Henry for reasons very different than what Henry was presenting to their audience. But they couldn’t let _those_ particular secrets out, and for that reason she had to appear more reluctant to accept the offer than she was truly feeling. If she was completely honest with herself, she doubted that she would have accepted the apology if Henry had offered it to her for the reasons that he was presenting.

All that aside, it didn’t change the fact that if they wanted to secure a new future different from the ones that Henry had warned her about in his timelines and beat the Entity that had screwed with all of their lives over and over again, Henry’s plan was the best that they had.

“For the good of the Toppat Clan,” Ellie agreed, taking care to make her voice sound grudging and suspicious as she completed the handshake. Her eyes narrowed and she added a threatening tone to her voice. “But I’m going to be watching you, Stickmin. If I even THINK that you’re gonna stab any of us in the back again, I’m not gonna give you the chance. I’ll just shoot you dead where you stand, the consequences be damned.”

Henry nodded. “I know, and it won’t happen again,” he promised as he sealed their (public) deal. Ellie turned her attention back to the audience. “I can say what I want about my grudges against Stickmin personally, but it doesn’t change the fact that he has some good plans for the Toppat Clan’s future, and that we’ll need his help to carry out that plan. For that reason, I am going to accept him back into the ranks of the Toppat Clan…so long as he continues to prove his loyalty,” she took a deep breath before continuing. “I will also have to elevated him into the ranks of the Toppat elites for the time being.”

There was another outcry, though this one wasn’t as large as the earlier one. “Wait, WHAT?” a Toppat exclaimed. “I can understand bringing Stickmin back into the Clan, but as a leader?”

“Why the hell should we accept someone who got denounced?” another one demanded.

Ellie’s eyes narrowed, and the audience immediately shut themselves up for fear of invoking her wrath. But she couldn’t justifiably be angry at them for asking, especially since it was a valid question. “We are currently in the process of negotiations with Galeforce to get the Government off our back and leave us alone for our new legal operations,” Ellie explained. “We managed to convince them that Henry was a deep cover agent for the Government who had risen to leadership of the Toppat Clan with a goal to discover our plans and work towards steering the Toppat Clan towards legal operations. Galeforce bought it, but he demanded that Stickmin be placed as a member of the Elites and report to him regularly.”

There was some grumbling at this, but there weren’t any open complaints this time around. Though they might not have trusted Stickmin, they trusted Ellie and the other Toppat elites who had served the Clan far more than they ever could. If they were going along with Henry’s plan and were accepting of his status as a temporary elite, they would accept it as well. Ellie made sure to show that, at least outwardly, she wasn’t any happier about this development than they were. “We’ll accept Henry as an Elite for now,” she continued, “but we’re going to be watching him _very_ closely. If he tries to make any major changes that we don’t like, or if we think that he’s trying to sell us out to the Government, then we’ll just toss him and his plan out of the airlock and go back to our old ways.” A smirk appeared on her lips. “After all, we’re the ones with a fully armed and operational Space Station. We’re the ones who can launch raids all over Earth at any time we want, and the Government can’t do a damn thing to stop us.”

Cheers and whoops echoed from many of the Toppats, and Ellie allowed them a moment to indulge in their superior position and pride. But her smile quickly faded, and her tone became pure business. “That being said,” Ellie warned, “as long as Henry takes his plans seriously and acts in the best interests of the Clan like he says, then we’re going to do the same. I’m going to keep my word and my side of the bargain with the Government. For those of you who are getting bored and want to get back in some of the action, we have plans for you that we’ll be presenting soon. But as long as things are going smoothly, there will be NO raids or criminal activities of any kind.” Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “We might have lied to Galeforce to some things, but the endgame isn’t one of them. The future and long life of the Toppat Clan is at stake here. If ANYBODY commits an unauthorized crime while we’re still cooperating with the Government, I will consider that treason against the Clan itself.”

There were murmurs at this declaration. Treachery against the Clan was arguably the most serious crime that you could be accused of in the Toppat Clan, and would almost invariably be punished severely. If you’re lucky, we’ll hand you over to the Government to be arrested. If you’re not…” she left the sentence unfinished, but the meaning was clear. The Toppats might not have taken this declaration as seriously from a different leader, but their leader was Ellie Rose. And she was not known for making idle threats.

“Let me assure you all,” Ellie concluded, “that we are still the Toppat Clan. We are one of the most powerful organizations ever created, with accomplishments that most of humanity can only dream of. And we have every intention of keeping it that way. All that we are really doing is working with the system rather than against the system, so that nobody will have any reason to stop us or go against us. Let’s hear it for the Toppat Clan!”

“YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” The cheer roared throughout the dining room as every Toppat raised a mug, threw their hands in the air, or otherwise celebrated the Toppat Clan and Ellie’s speech. As they began talking amongst themselves to discuss the latest developments, Ellie and Henry turned to leave the dining room. While some of their discussions on how to plan for the future involved the Toppat elites, other times it was just the two of them. Especially in cases where Ellie wanted to know more about the timelines that Henry had been a part of.

“I think that went well,” Ellie commented as they entered an elevator together.

“Went better than I expected,” Henry replied as the elevator rose higher up the Space Station.

“Soooo…what now?” Ellie asked. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had had similar conversations with Henry in the timelines where he had helped her at the Wall and they had been partners instead of enemies. “We still have a lot of things that we need to take care of. What should we deal with first?”

Henry thought for a moment. With how complicated his plans were, and how badly things could fuck up if they made poor decisions (especially with the Entity around to possibly screw things around even further), he had to choose carefully.

“I think…” he started after several seconds of silence, “…we should start with this…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And I think that’s a good place to end things for now.
> 
> There’s no way most people would believe Henry if he told the full and honest truth. Hell, he needed to provide a lot of specific evidence that there’s no way he could possibly know normally to convince Ellie. So, the two of them are weaving truth and lie together to convince everyone that Henry isn’t the backstabbing bastard that they all think he is. The details might have been made up, but the fundamentals remain true. And hey, no need to look too closely at the details :P
> 
> We’re starting to see the traces of Henry’s and Ellie’s relationship when they were friends and allies return, although not nearly to the degree that Henry would prefer yet. What part of the big plan do you think that Henry will decide to tackle first?
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed!


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